


tell me how far it is to the end of the world

by statusquo_ergo



Series: tell me something i'll believe [3]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Car Accidents, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rehabilitation, Season/Series 06, Slow Burn, Traumatic Brain Injury - TBI
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-10-22 21:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17670518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: This is uncharted territory, this is a new horizon, this is shark-infested waters.Dive in.





	1. Chapter 1

Mike moves into Harvey’s place in a quiet sort of way.

There aren’t any boxes to unpack, or schedules to coordinate, or piles of things to keep and things to donate to the VA. No need to commission the freight elevator to bring up any heavy furniture, no need to beg and bribe friends and family into sacrificing their time and emptying their gas tanks from point A to point B.

Harvey mentions a couple of times that he thinks he got everything from Rachel that Mike would think was important, but he isn’t sure, and if something’s missing, Mike just needs to ask, and he’ll get it, no problem.

It’s a nice of him. The offer, it’s kind. Well-intentioned.

The lobby, the elevator, the front door are all so familiar that Mike doesn’t even think twice, and he doesn’t remember his way around the apartment, exactly, but he knows he’s been here before, and he can probably figure it out without a lot of effort. Maybe if Harvey just reminds him which way’s the bathroom, what’s down that hall there. The guest room has its own en suite, right? Which door is that again?

Harvey smiles like he isn’t sure he’s allowed, offering Mike free run of the refrigerator, pointing to the couch and telling him that he can watch whatever he wants on TV, or maybe he wants to borrow a book, or he can just get settled into his room, maybe take a nap.

Having considered all his options, Mike lines his feet up with the slats of the wooden floor and shuffles into the living room; he sits down on the black leather couch, and he picks up one of the heavy black and white patterned pillows, holding it over his stomach. In a minute, after he’s gotten settled, gotten used to the feel of the slick cushions underneath him, the overstuffing at his back, Mike tucks his legs up beside him and tips over, nestling his head against the base of the armrest as he stares off into space.

This is good.

\---

A little after midnight, well after Mike has gone off to bed to sleep or to lie awake or to memorize his new room or to do whatever it is he wants to do, Harvey pours himself a glass of Scotch, two fingers, and sits down across from the couch in a black club chair. One of two. He sits in the chair closer to the kitchen, closer to the guest bedroom; not for any particular reason, just. Because.

Five years ago, or thereabouts, was Mike’s first time here. Five years ago, more or less, Mike sagged drunkenly against the door frame, his tie loosened and his shirt disheveled as he offered up his bar napkin of trade secrets, and Harvey sent him home with a promise to have Donna give him a spare key, because he knew, he could tell that Mike was important, that he was going to stay important, even though he didn’t know quite how much.

Harvey looks down at his liquor with a little smile on his face, tilting the amber liquid back and forth as it catches the reflection of the city lights filling the window behind him, the vast emptiness offering everything, offering every imaginable thing in the world, and promising none of it.

That window. That’s the window where they stood, him and Mike, those are the same city lights they surveyed when Mike decided he wanted to go to law school, to get into the bar under his own name, to do this thing for real, and Harvey, poor Harvey, still too stupid to understand the depths of this thing they’re doing, this game they’re playing, foolish Harvey told him to just hold on tight and enjoy the ride, because they couldn’t play for a lifetime, but they should take what they could while it was there for them. While they could still see it.

Harvey closes his eyes and drinks.

\---

“So what do you want to do for your first day as a free man?”

Mike stirs his Rice Krispies and wonders what’s the nicest way to say “Absolutely nothing.” Harvey smiles at him, encouraging and unhurried, and Mike doesn’t know anything, so he just stirs his Rice Krispies and wonders.

“Anywhere you wanna go?” Harvey prompts, cradling his full mug in front of his chest as he waits for the coffee to cool.

Anywhere at all.

Mike puts a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, and Harvey waits for his coffee to cool.

“Buenos Aires,” Mike says, because the words spring to mind for no particular reason, and Harvey smiles, lifting his mug to his lips and taking a sip, even though it’s probably still too hot.

“Might be a little much for a day trip,” he says, and Mike smiles at his bowl full of soggy pulp and too much milk.

“I dunno,” he admits. “I kind of just wanna hang out here.”

Harvey nods sincerely, setting down the mug that was really more of a prop than a necessity, and Mike stirs his milk and sludge.

“Yeah,” Harvey says, “whatever you want.”

The edge of his spoon clicks against the bottom of his bowl, and Mike bites the tip of his tongue.

“But can we go out for dinner?”

Grinning wide like Mike’s just given him a present, Harvey picks his mug up again, raises it back to his lips just for something to do with all this bright and cheerful energy that’s come up out of nowhere after being stomped on and smothered for so long. Drinks his not-too-hot coffee, wiping his thumb across his chin when a little spills out the side of his mouth.

“Sure,” he says as he sets the mug back down. “Anywhere in particular?”

Mike shrugs, not having thought this through particularly well.

“Thai?”

Harvey’s grin gets a little smaller, and Mike doesn’t know what he expected, but he probably shouldn’t be surprised that Harvey’s disappointed in him. Don’t answer a question with a question, Michael, Father Walker used to say, even though Mike is pretty sure that’s something he does all the time now. Him and Harvey. It happens a lot in their line of work.

“You got it,” Harvey says. “How’s seven sound? Too early?”

Dinner at the hospital happened whenever someone brought him food.

“Seven’s fine.”

Harvey smiles a softer kind of smile, and Mike gets a nice sort of feeling in his chest like he’s done something right.

Good job, Michael.

\---

Seven’s fine. It is. It’s just that the place Harvey picked didn’t have reservations available until eight, but that’s fine too; Mike doesn’t have a schedule to keep or anything.

Physical therapy is at ten or eleven o’clock, or something like that.

Wait. No. No, tomorrow it’ll be ten o’clock, and then it’ll be eleven, and he won’t go to physical therapy, and it’ll be fine.

Don’t forget.

For now, they go out for Thai, and Mike orders steamed dumplings and green curry because the names are in English, and Harvey orders the Pla Muk Tod and Kang Ped Pet Yang because he’s been living in the real world his entire life and he knows what he’s doing. Mike doesn’t mind.

They sit sipping water and local beer for a minute before Mike clears his throat and tips his glass.

“So when do I start?”

Harvey raises his eyebrows and sets his bottle down.

“Start what?”

Mike hikes his shoulders a little. “Back at the firm,” he says, the most obvious thing in the world.

Leaning back in his chair, Harvey narrows his eyes and thins his lips in an uncertain sort of way, and somewhere along the line, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.

“I don’t know,” Harvey says as though he’s waiting for Mike to throw hot soup in his face. “Maybe a few months; we’ll have to see how you’re doing with the outpatient stuff. Maybe I can start bringing home some cases for us to work on together, get… Get you back in the swing of things.”

Mike sets his glass back on the table and looks down at his lap, at the napkin spread across his thighs.

“A few months?” he echoes.

Harvey nods.

“You’re doing great,” he reminds him, or reminds them both, “but… I don’t want to give you too much too fast, I don’t want you to get overwhelmed.”

Mike quirks his lip. “You don’t think I can take it?”

“I don’t want you to push yourself so hard that you get hurt,” Harvey corrects. “Mike, you hold yourself to some pretty high standards, and most of the time it’s great, it’s—it’s really helpful, you’ve pulled my ass out of the fire more than once by not giving up on your instincts, but this is…” He sighs, hoping Mike will take his word for it, knowing that he won’t.

“This is different.”

Different. Of course it is. This is uncharted territory, this is a new horizon, this is shark-infested waters.

Dive in.

“I can do it.”

Harvey sighs again, a little shorter, a little less patient, and Mike does his best to look like he knows what he’s talking about.

“Mike,” Harvey says, “have you noticed that you kind of pause before you talk?”

Frowning, Mike sets his arms on the table.

“Yeah,” he defends, “I’m thinking about what I want to say before I say it.”

“That’s great,” Harvey praises, “and I’m glad you’re thinking before you speak, but my point is that it’s taking you a little longer than usual to do that. Which is fine,” he presses on before Mike begins to object, “your brain’s still healing, you’re still recovering, I’m just saying that you— You’re just as smart as you’ve always been, you’ve got all the same capacity for learning, and all that drive and determination that makes you _you,_ but the… All the parts aren’t back up to that level yet. The speed, and maybe the endurance.”

Mike looks down at his lap, at the napkin spread across his thighs, and thinks about saying that this is the best that he can do. This is the best he’ll ever do, the most he can ever be.

Harvey probably wouldn’t believe him.

Harvey knows these things.

\---

Sometime in the dead of night, a few hours or a few minutes after Mike’s gone to sleep, he wakes for no particular reason, with no particular purpose, to find himself curled up on his side with one hand shoved under the pillows, and the palm of his other pressed up against his right temple.

The spot above his temple is a soft dip, an uneven pit in the smooth dome of his skull. Mike traces his fingers along it, around and around until he finds a scar buried underneath the hair on the other side, a long, thick line of oily tissue reaching from the top of his spine all the way up to the crown of his head.

It doesn’t hurt to touch.

He didn’t really expect that it would.

As he shifts over, an indifferent effort to turn onto his back, the heel of his hand digs into the soft crater of his skull, pressure on the fragile skin, the brain underneath, a tender organ still in recovery; a vicious ache grips his head and he winces, suddenly terrified of his own body. Still healing, still breakable, still flimsy and delicate in ways he doesn’t even know, he wasn’t there, he didn’t see, he didn’t ask.

The ache throbs in time with the blood pulsing through his veins, and he doesn’t know why he’s surprised.

You’re doing great, Mike.

But this is different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mike and Harvey have dinner at [Up Thai](http://www.upthainyc.com/front/home).
> 
> Pla Muk Tod: Crispy-fried calamari served with spicy mayo  
> Kang Ped Pet Yang: Crispy half-deboned duck breast, curry paste, young coconut meat, pineapple, bell pepper, onion, tomatoes and basil leaves
> 
> “Oh. Oh, you’ve got a sweet place, dude.”  
> “Don’t ever call me ‘dude.’”  
> “You think that maybe I could take it off your hands? Like, when you’re going out of town? Like a— Like a house-sitting type situation?”  
> “Remind me to have Donna get you a spare key. You have the trades?”  
> “Ta-da!”  
> “Good.”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “[Tricks of the Trade](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s01e06)” (s01e06)
> 
> “I want to go legit.”  
> “You can’t.”  
> “Harvey, listen—”  
> “Do I need to state the obvious?”  
> “I can go to law school now, all right? Get a real degree.”  
> “Even if it didn’t matter that you’ve already presented yourself as having gone to Harvard Law, you’d have to take the bar again.”  
> “Okay, I passed it once, I’ll pass it again.”  
> “Not under your own name. And if you take it now, you’ll draw attention to yourself in a major way. Mike, you’re in the major leagues, and you get to go toe-to-toe with the best there is. … And I can’t tell you if that’s enough for a lifetime, but if you want to stay, there’s nothing more you can do. My advice is hold on tight and enjoy the ride.”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “[Heartburn](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s03e14)” (s03e14)
> 
> Please feel free to say hi on [tumblr](https://statusquoergo.tumblr.com).


	2. Chapter 2

Mike dreams of exploring an abandoned radium mine illuminated by mirrors and flashing lights, and when he wakes early the next morning, the sound of thunder is easy to mistake for a rattling railway car.

After a few seconds, he’s forgotten he dreamed anything at all.

Tucked in under the covers, Mike watches the room’s shadows fade into shapes of things, bookcases and chairs and side tables thirsting for the city lights leaking into the room through the gossamer curtains at his back. This is a lovely place full of lovely things, and he would appreciate them if he was a better person. If he was smarter, and wiser.

For now, he contents himself with merely being, with his existence seeming to give other people some happiness in their own lives. There’s Harvey, of course; probably Rachel, maybe Donna. Maybe others. He serves his purpose.

Turning to the right, he lets his head sink down into the soft pillow, the silk pillowcase, and it doesn’t make his brain hurt at all. He squints his eyes and tries to make out the titles of some of the books along the wall, but they’re too far away and the print is too small, and the light leaking in through the curtains has given shape to things, but it’s still too dark to be certain of any of it.

Mike turns his head to the left, toward the side table with its big heavy lamp and glass of water that Harvey insisted on providing and Mike accepted with feigned interest, even though he ended up drinking half of it before he nodded off last night.

This is nice. This is all…very nice.

Quite apathetically, Mike closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, the light leaking in through the curtains no longer comes from the sleepless metropolis spread across the ground but from the sun arcing in the sky, which is only strange for a moment before he realizes that quite a bit of time must have passed in that instant, the span of a blink. The alarm clock reads eight fifty-five, and Mike is perfectly awake, and the day is going to last for several more hours before he has to go back to sleep.

Mike tries to unmake the bed as little as possible as he slips out from underneath the covers, and it doesn’t go too badly, he doesn’t think. Leaving the edges untucked, he crosses his arms over his chest, reaching up to press his right hand down on his left shoulder as he steps slowly toward the bookcase.

 _Harvard Classics_ , the gold print reads. Fifty-one identical red volumes span two and a half shelves; right in front of his face is Volume 38, _Harvey Jenner Lister Pasteur_. _Scientific Papers_ , it says inside the front cover, copyright 1910. He puts it back, pressing it in line with his index finger; probably a different Harvey, then. That would’ve been pretty ostentatious.

Down the stacks are more colorful books, less dusty and less prestigious. _Drive_. _The Tipping Point_. _Freakonomics_. The titles sounds familiar; he’s read them before, probably. Has he? He must have; they sound so familiar.

But has he really?

Mike massages his shoulder, gripping the muscle tight.

Does it matter?

\---

The night’s thunderstorms have given way to a cornflower sky morning, and Mike stands at the window in the living room, surveying his soaring kingdom and wishing it would snow.

“Good morning,” Harvey says, turning off the muted television and walking to the kitchen to pour himself a mug of coffee, even though Mike is reasonably sure he’s already been up for a few hours, at least.

“Morning.”

Harvey hums softly. “Sleep well?”

More or less.

“Yeah. You?”

“How’s your head?”

Mike tilts his head to the right and crosses his arms to keep himself from reaching up to touch it.

“I had a headache when I woke up this morning,” he says, “but it’s fine.”

Harvey lowers his mug. “You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s not bad. Comes and goes.”

“You want me to call Irving?”

Harvey says it like he’s looking for an excuse, and Mike can’t decide whether to roll his eyes or smile indulgently, settling for neither.

“It’s fine,” he repeats. “On and off. I’ve had it for awhile. It’s getting better.”

Thinning his lips, Harvey starts to raise his mug again as though to drink from it, reconsidering at the last moment and setting it down on the counter quietly enough that Mike can’t hear it from where he stands.

“If it ever gets bad enough that it’s giving you problems,” Harvey says, leaving so much room for interpretation that Mike is a little offended, “let me know, and I’ll call Irving. The doctors are there for a reason, alright, they don’t spend all this time with you just to send you on your way and hope for the best.”

Mike thinks about follow-up visits and physical therapy and phenytoin, and decides that’s probably true.

“I have to go to work tomorrow,” Harvey says, as though if he slips it casually enough into the conversation, maybe it won’t come true. “You can call me whenever you want, if you have any questions, or you need anything. Anytime.”

Mike thinks about good intentions and late nights and being all things to all people, and decides he’ll try to take care of himself.

“Jason said I should keep exercising,” Mike says. “Nothing with balls. But as long as I’m not risking hitting my head, he said it’s a good idea.”

“Yeah,” Harvey agrees, as though that has anything to do with anything, “yeah, I bet. There’s a fitness center downstairs that’s got a pretty basic setup, treadmills and ellipticals and stuff, there’s a rowing machine, a couple bikes, and we’ve got a pool on the second floor, if you want to check that out. I’ll call Jason tomorrow and ask him if he has any suggestions.”

Mike wonders if he’ll ever get to a point in his life where he doesn’t need to get permission before he’s allowed to do what he wants.

“Can I use your laptop for a minute?” he asks, which is not so much asking permission as it is seeking a favor, and that feels alright.

“Sure,” Harvey says immediately, abandoning his coffee to cross to the living room, to his laptop sitting idly on the coffee table. “You uh, you had a laptop at home, it’s in the closet, but it’s… It’s a few years old, maybe you want a new one.”

Mike wonders if it would make Harvey feel better for him to accept the offer or to stand on his own two feet and make do with what he’s got, but he doesn’t need to decide that right now.

“Thanks.”

Sitting on the sofa, he props the laptop open in his lap and types “radium” into Google, trying to remember as he reads the Wikipedia article whether this is something that he might have known at one point. On the other side of the coffee table, sitting in a chair with the daily newspaper propped open on his crossed legs, Harvey keeps glancing at Mike as though he’s filling a quota, collecting memories in the event of an unforeseeable emergency, and Mike pretends not to notice.

“Hey Harvey,” Mike says as he reads the article through for the second time, skimming the text because most of it is already stuck in his brain, lodged in there as though he’s known it all his life, only missing a few sentences here and there that have words in them that he doesn’t know how to pronounce.

“Yeah,” Harvey says with affected indifference, his voice stifled just a bit by the newspaper propped open in front of his face.

Mike clicks on the embedded link for “nuclear medicine” and begins reading, even though only some of it is interesting.

“How long was I in the hospital?”

Harvey turns the page of his newspaper and clears his throat.

“You were at Stony Brook for a little more than two weeks,” he says, “and then you moved to Sinai for about five months.”

For no particularly good reason he can think of, Mike types “Harvard club” into the search bar, clicking on the first link that pops up and looking around the website for something he won’t recognize until he sees it.

“Really?” he asks, even though Harvey wouldn’t lie about something like that, and Mike didn’t have any expectations about what the answer would be.

Harvey shakes his newspaper a little, straightening out the creases.

“Yeah.”

Mike clicks on a link that reads, “About the Club.”

“Where’re my seizure pills?”

“Bathroom, behind the mirror,” Harvey murmurs. “Irving said you should try to take them at the same time every day, when did you have it yesterday?”

The Harvard Club of New York City was founded in 1865.

“Around one.”

“You still got a couple hours.”

He knows that, actually, but it’s understandable that Harvey wouldn’t assume as much.

“Yeah.”

Whatever Mike was looking for, he hasn’t found it.

A funny noise begins to rattle the air, an irregular sort of tapping sound that Harvey ignores entirely and probably isn’t anything to worry about. Mike looks up and around, making no effort at subtlety, and finds nothing to explain it away; after a minute, it becomes more rhythmic, steadier and louder, but he doesn’t figure out what it is until a rumble of thunder makes his skull tremble in a pleasant sort of way and he decides it must be raining again, which is almost as good as snow but not quite.

So much for blue skies.

A puddle’s collected out on the balcony, and if he cranes his neck, he can see the pinprick drops ripple out and disappear. Mike thinks about going outside and throwing rocks down into the street, but overall, that seems like a pretty impractical use of his time.

Plus, he’s gotta keep an eye on the clock. Gotta take his pill around one.

\---

Late in the evening, late enough that he ought to be calling it nighttime, Mike sits on his bed in Harvey’s guest room, this room that he already thinks of with a familiar sense of ownership, as though he has the right, and shoves up his loose sleeves, inspecting the pale flesh of his wrists as though he’s never seen them before.

Four scars mar the left half of his left wrist, a slightly imperfect parallelogram of two mottled circles balanced against two identical pairs of pinpricks. He kills a bit of time trying to figure out where they might’ve come from, what could have brought them on, even though he doesn’t know anything for sure; an IV, probably, but as for the “when,” as for the “why,” the “what the hell,” it doesn’t matter very much. There’s a single round scar at the crook of his right elbow that makes him think of transfusions, but that doesn’t feel quite right, though he isn’t sure why.

Shaking down his sleeves, he touches his collarbone, the left side that melts back into his body and the right that stops with an abrupt knob. Must’ve been broken in the accident; his right knee has a skittering scar below the kneecap that he doesn’t remember getting, so the car must’ve hit him on his right side, probably. That would explain all of it.

Mike raises his fingertips to the dip above his right temple, the weird misshapenness of his skull, and looks down at his body, an unfamiliar map of landmarks to events he doesn’t remember, posts he doesn’t recognize on a road he should know like…the back of his hand.

Looking down at a slash of a scar on his left shin, Mike wonders if anyone would argue if he said he’d fallen off his bicycle in the third grade trying to do a wheelie. Who knows? Maybe it’s the truth.

Who cares?

Only him.

Lying down on his side, Mike looks over at the bookcases again, not out of genuine interest so much as because they’re there, because it’s the natural place for his eye to fall. On the shelves below the Harvard Classics are a bunch of similar-but-different volumes; the Barnes & Noble Classics, _Wuthering Heights_ and _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and _Crime and Punishment_ and so on, color-coded in some indecipherable scheme to which he’d like to ascribe an order even though he knows he can’t, knows there isn’t one.

At the end of the row, down in the corner, crammed in against the wall of the shelves and almost out of sight, completely out of place, is a little stuffed dog, black and white with bright blue eyes and soft-looking fur. It doesn’t match anything at all, audacious by its very presence, and Mike likes it quite a lot. Maybe he’ll ask Harvey about it. Ask him for the story.

But what if it’s there by mistake? What if he asks, and Harvey remembers that he meant to put it away?

Mike doesn’t need to know that badly.

\---

Mike wakes the next morning in silence, the apartment still in such a way that it would be terrifying and invasive to find another human being walking the halls. Harvey must have left for work already; it’s only a little after eight, but who knows what kind of rules he isn’t allowed to break anymore, now that Mike is out of the hospital. Now that he can be kept under lock and key somewhere that they can always get to him.

No, that’s not fair. Harvey invited him here out of the goodness of his heart and told him he could do as he pleased; there’s no padlock on the door, no bars on the windows. Mike can do whatever he wants.

And what is that, exactly?

Everything and nothing at all.

Mike scrubs his hands through his hair, feeling the jagged lines underneath and trying not to memorize each and every one, trying not to guess which ones mean which hurts, which damages, because he doesn’t know, he can’t know, and there’s no point in trying to figure it out because later on, when he learns, if he ever does, all this will do is confuse him, which won’t do anyone any good. Instead he drags his palms down over his eyes, digging his fingertips into the sockets and rubbing little windshield wiper semicircles, back and forth, back and forth, white and red lights offering vague impressions of objects without definition, without resolution.

It’s not raining anymore; he could go outside, go to the park. There are a few little ones within walking distance, Harvey told him; Tompkins Square, Washington Square, Union Square, Stuyvesant Square. Cooper Triangle.

Of course, he hasn’t the faintest idea where any of them are, and doesn’t really feel like asking. Besides that, what does he expect to do there, exactly? Sit on a bench and stare at the road? He can do as much on the balcony, a far better view and closer to the bathroom besides.

He told Harvey, and he promised Jason, that he wanted to keep up his exercises. There’s the gym downstairs he could investigate, and it might not hurt to acquaint himself with the pool on the second floor.

Of course, the exercises he did with Jason were all therapeutic and have mainly served their purpose, not to mention the fact that most of them necessitate either a partner or a spotter. He could invent himself a new routine, but without guidance, what would be the point of it? He doesn’t want to set his progress back any.

Mike knocks his head back against the headboard. It’s not as though anything’s going to happen at all if he doesn’t get the fuck out of bed. He’ll go to the kitchen and fix himself some breakfast, maybe a bowl of Rice Krispies, a glass of water, a peanut butter sandwich, whatever, and he’ll figure the rest out as he goes.

Sliding down the hall to the kitchen in his pajamas and socked feet, Mike grabs an apple off the counter and runs it under the faucet. The sun shining through the windows is much too bright, reflecting off of everything and making the living room furniture look all greasy, even though it most assuredly isn’t.

Mike takes a bite of his apple, water and juice dripping down his chin into the sink.

Harvey said he liked to read, right? Back before all this shit. He memorized the study guide for the bar exam. Now he’s got hours and hours of nothing to do, and shelves and shelves of Harvard Classics and Barnes and Noble Classics and all kinds of other books just sitting there, waiting to remind him of the guy he used to be.

As these things go, the likelihood of accidentally unlocking his tragic backstory is pretty low.

And it’s not as though he’s doing anyone any real good just by being alive.

\---

Harvey sits with his feet planted firmly on the floor, clutching the edge of his desk as he reads and read page after page of the mounting evidence of William Sutter’s insider trading practices and reminds himself over and over not to resent Jessica for foisting this on him, even after he tried to warn her against taking this asshole on in the first place. He tries to narrow his attention, but it’s hard to concentrate with his unconscious mind persistently bracing for the earthquake that’s sure to come on today, a unrelenting reminder in infuriatingly nonspecific terms so that all he knows is to be braced for Some Disaster, constantly on alert.

Through his glass office walls, he watches Donna stand from her desk, straightening her skirt before she turns to creep toward him with her hands at her sides, taking careful steps in her stiletto heels, and she’ll be done for if a typhoon hits while she’s walking across the carpet.

“Harvey?”

He looks up with a start, as though he didn’t see her coming.

“Donna.”

She smiles a little bashfully, as though there might still be any secrets between them.

“Jessica gave you Sutter’s case file?”

He arches his eyebrows. “Would you like me to pretend I didn’t know you already knew that?”

“Fine,” she replies, setting her hand on her hip. “Never mind. How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” he mimics, tightening his grip on the glass. “Practicing my I-told-you-so speech for Jessica.”

“That you’re never going to deliver; you know why she gave this back to you.”

“She took over Rachel’s Innocence Project thing, I know. The two of them off saving the world together while I’m stuck here cleaning up her mess.”

Donna smirks, and Harvey wonders for a moment if this is what life would be like if Mike Ross had never existed.

“I can see you’re bitter,” she says. “I’ll come back later.”

No, she won’t. Not about this.

“I’m not paying you to bother me,” he says, which is a canned response, and she won’t take him seriously, and he can pretend the whole thing never happened.

She walks off in her tight skirt and tall stilettos, and his eyes drift to the phone as he waits for it to ring, the automatic alert of the Emergency Broadcast Message, prerecorded. Category Five, seek shelter, remain indoors for the duration.

Four more hours to quitting time, and Harvey’s been awake since midnight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Radium is a highly radioactive element found mainly in uranium ores.
> 
> “It’s from _Freakonomics_. Do you read anything that I give you?”  
> —Mike (to Trevor), “[Pilot](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s01e01)” (s01e01)
> 
> Brontë, E. (2005). _Wuthering Heights_. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.  
> Dostoevsky, F. (2007). _Crime and Punishment_. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.  
> Dumas, A. (2004). _The Count of Monte Cristo_ New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.  
> Eliot, C. W. (Ed.). (1910). _The Harvard Classics_ (Vol. 38). New York: P.F. Collier & Son.  
> Gladwell, M. (2002). _The Tipping Point: How Little Thing Can Make a Big Difference_. New York, NY: Back Bay Books.  
> Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2005). _Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything_. New York, NY: William Morrow.  
> Pink, D. H. (2011). _Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us_. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.


	3. Chapter 3

On Friday afternoon, that dusky time around five thirty when people start to say “Good night” instead of just “Bye,” even though the evening doesn’t technically start until about six, Mike finishes reading _Call of the Wild and White Fang_ , a couple of not particularly difficult stories which up the count of books he’s struggled through so far to seven. He hasn’t the slightest idea as to whether to be proud of the number or ashamed it isn’t higher; on the other hand, on Wednesday, Harvey saw him reading _Frankenstein_ and seemed to be pretty pleased about it, so maybe it isn’t the number Mike needs to be concerned with so much as the fact that he’s reading anything at all, which is a nice thought that doesn’t especially make him feel better about anything.

When Mike returns _Call of the Wild and White Fang_ to the shelves, he makes sure to put it beside the little stuffed dog tucked into the corner, and it doesn’t make him happy, exactly, but it does somehow feel like the right thing to do, so there’s that. Then before he even has a chance to stand up from the floor, he hears the front door opening and can’t help but wonder if Harvey’s come home early because he wants to or because he feels like he has to, and the sort-of-happiness-but-not-really disappears altogether.

A cabinet opens in the kitchen; a moment later, running water.

“Mike?”

Mike steps out of his room, glancing at the clock on the microwave; it’s only five forty-five.

“Hey.”

Harvey looks over inquisitively, as though Mike’s somehow surprised him just by being, and he smiles as he raises his water glass.

“How was your day?”

Mike shrugs and thinks about how many different ways there must be to say that today was just the same as every other day.

“Fine.”

Yes, that’s about right.

Harvey nods and sips his water.

“I finally managed to get ahold of Jason,” he says. “I told him you were looking for something a little more cathartic than running and lifting weights, you know what he recommended?”

“Skeet shooting,” Mike guesses as Harvey casts him a dry glare.

“Nice try,” he quips. “No, he said you should think about boxing.”

Boxing, like Harvey does. Of course, that makes all the sense in the world.

Harvey boxes?

Sure he does, you know that.

That’s right.

Quirking his eyebrows, Mike rests his hip against the kitchen counter. “That doesn’t seem a little head trauma-adjacent to you?”

“Not if you don’t get into any real fights,” Harvey says, his tone pitching a little. “We can go down to my gym tomorrow, I’ll show you around, we’ll find you a trainer. Someone who’ll be careful about the head trauma adjacency. Body shots and battle ropes, we’ll keep it simple.”

Nice and simple. Yeah, that’s the way to go. Maybe he and Harvey can work out together sometime, maybe Harvey can take him under his wing. Maybe everything will be just like it used to be, back in the good old days.

And how was that again?

Oh for god’s sake, don’t be so melodramatic.

“I was on the wrestling team in high school,” Mike says for no particular reason.

Harvey smiles softly.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You told me.”

Mike nods.

Sure he did.

\---

The gym is both exactly what Mike expected, and nothing like what he would imagine.

Everything about the space has an industrial sort of feel to it. The walls are a dirty-looking brownish grey color, mostly covered by exposed pipes and air ducts, and the few fluorescent lights scattered around the ceiling all seem to be putting out only about half their maximum capacity. One wall is almost entirely windows, big glass panes reaching about two thirds of the way from the floor up to the ceiling, and the rest are the exact opposite, unfinished concrete with a high row of panels that don’t give a view of much of anything but a bit of sky. It’s a perfect boxing gym, right out of the movies, and Mike can’t imagine Harvey spending more than about five minutes here without needing a shower and a change of clothes.

Despite all of that, Harvey ushers Mike forward to a desk crammed against the wall that probably doubles as the reception area, rapping his knuckles against the surface to attract the attention of the kid sitting there with his eyes fixed on his cell phone.

“Hey,” Harvey says as the kid looks up with a distressingly fake smile on his face. “Is Sergei here?”

“Um.” The kid leans back to survey the floor, and Mike looks away as Harvey rolls his eyes. “I don’t think so, I haven’t seen him today.”

Harvey sighs through his teeth. “Great,” he grinds out, “thanks.”

Setting his hand on Mike’s back, Harvey turns them both toward the gym proper to make their way over to the heavy bags, and the kid’s attention drifts back to his phone.

“Alright,” Harvey mutters under his breath as they draw near to a tall Hispanic guy beating the crap out of one of the bags while a somber blonde woman looks on beside him. “Tracy,” he calls at a somewhat more normal volume, “you got a minute?”

The guy keeps beating on the bag for another few seconds until a timer starts trilling, and the woman nods approvingly, tapping her phone to stop the alarm.

“Not bad,” she says. “Take a couple minutes, then I want to see your hook again before we call it a day.”

Mike looks between them uncertainly as Harvey grins.

“Looking good,” he says.

“He ought to,” the woman replies as the guy walks off toward a water fountain on the back wall. “We’ve been working together for almost five years now.”

“It shows. Mike,” Harvey pats Mike’s shoulder, “this is Tracy, one of the best boxing trainers I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Tracy, Mike’s my associate at Pearson Specter Litt.”

Am I still? Do you promise?

“Nice to meet you,” Tracy says, reaching out to shake his hand. “I’m guessing you’re interested in training with me.”

Mike takes her hand firmly, and Harvey smiles at the two of them.

“Sorry, I’m kind of springing this on him,” he admits. “Mike actually just got out of the hospital about a week ago, after a, uh, a head injury, and his physical therapist thought boxing would be a good way to get him back into shape. With—appropriate safety measures,” he tacks on at Tracy’s obvious skepticism. “I thought you might be able to help him out.”

Her mouth drawn thin, Tracy scrutinizes Mike as he takes stock of his surroundings, looking over his shoulder at the boxing ring taking up nearly half the floor.

“Any other issues I need to know about?” she asks Harvey, even though Mike is the one with the head injury.

“I was in a coma for two weeks,” Mike remarks, and Tracy nods sagely.

“Alright,” she says, “I think I can help you out. So what are we thinking, twice a week?”

“For starters,” Harvey says as Mike wanders a few feet away to a little speed bag hanging from a mount on the wall. “Tuesday Thursday works for you?”

Mike pokes the speed bag, and Tracy crosses her arms over her chest.

“We can get started next week if you want.”

Mike pokes the speed bag, and he wonders if this might be enough to distract him from the fact that everything is pretty much pointless.

Hey, it could happen.

\---

Sunday dawns crisp and bright, clear enough to be inviting but not so clear as to be suspicious. Blue, but not too blue; cloudy, but not too cloudy. Mike twists his body around and sets his hands on top of the headboard, pulling himself up as far as he can, which isn’t very far at all but is enough for him to see out the window, enough to put the idea into his head that it would be nice to go for a walk along the river.

Tomorrow is Monday; tomorrow, Harvey will go to work, and Mike will wait for the day to finish up, passing the time reading books he isn’t really interested in but which give him a sense of satisfaction to get all the way through to the end, but today, today, Harvey is here, and there isn’t any kind of template for them to follow, but at least Mike doesn’t have to figure everything out all by himself.

Shoving the blankets down, Mike climbs out of bed and walks to the closet for a soft t-shirt and a pair of cargo pants that have a tear in the seam of one of the pockets. He hears a rapid clicking noise from the kitchen; the sound of a burner being fired up, Harvey must be using the stove. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, french toast; there are a dozen things he could be making, but Mike can’t remember the last time he saw Harvey have anything more than coffee for breakfast. Maybe there’s something unusual about today.

“Morning,” Harvey says as Mike closes his bedroom door behind him. The air smells of oil and potatoes, and Mike shuffles closer to peer into the frying pan.

“Morning,” he echoes. “What are you doing today?”

“Mm?” Harvey glances over curiously. “I didn’t have anything planned, why, is there something you wanted to do?”

A cube of bell pepper leaps out of the pan onto the counter, and Mike reaches out to pop it into his mouth before Harvey notices it’s gone.

“What’s the weather supposed to be like?”

Harvey clears his throat. “Cool,” he says. “I don’t think it’s supposed to rain or anything.”

Don’t answer a question with a question, Michael.

“I want to go for a walk.”

“Oh.” Harvey’s face twitches, his neck drawing back a little, as though the idea of going outside, the notion of Mike wanting to venture beyond the apartment is foreign and disturbing, but he said, didn’t he, he said they could do whatever Mike wanted to do, go wherever he wanted to go, and he can’t take it back now, that would be mean.

“You know where you want to go?” Harvey asks, grinding back pepper on top of his potatoes and bell peppers, and Mike opens the cabinets to get out the Rice Krispies.

“The river,” Mike says.

Harvey smiles. “Sure,” he says, “we can walk along the East River Promenade. I haven’t been there in…years, but from what I remember, I think you’ll like it. It’s pretty nice.”

Mike pours himself a bowl of Rice Krispies and probably not enough milk, nodding and placing the tip of his tongue between his teeth. It wasn’t much of a request, as these things go, but Harvey seems to appreciate it. The way it makes today something unusual.

Harvey finishes stir-frying his potatoes and bell peppers, and Mike pours a little more milk into his cereal when he gets down to the lower half of the bowl and finds mostly dry kernels, and it takes just a few seconds of only somewhat awkward silence after they’re done eating for Harvey to put his dishes in the sink and fetch his coat from the closet. Mike takes the hint, leaving his bowl on top of Harvey’s plate and retrieving his coat, too, following Harvey out into the hall and standing with his hands in his pockets while Harvey locks the door, and neither of them says anything, but for the time being, Mike can’t think of anything in particular that he’d like Harvey to know, so that’s alright.

The walk to the Promenade is seven long blocks; there are trees and plants and things, most of them dead, although it’s probably very nice in the springtime. Mike doesn’t mind, being that the water is the thing he’s really looking out for; an invisible force in his brain stops him walking too close to the edge of the road, but then Harvey takes his place alongside the barrier, a perfect buffer zone against the sheer drop into the river, and Mike can walk beside him and pretend that nothing’s wrong.

Mike kicks a rock down the path for a few yards until he accidentally kicks it off into the grass, and it would be kind of stupid to go and get it.

“Thanks for bringing me to the gym,” he says, staring down at his feet.

“Sure thing,” Harvey says, stepping over a crack in the pavement.

Mike takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of beaches and high tide.

“So I’m gonna see Tracy twice a week?”

Harvey nods. “That’s the plan for now, we’ll see how it works out.”

Mike hums. “Cool.”

“Uh-huh.”

The scent of beaches and high tide comes and goes.

“I want to be a lawyer again.”

Harvey stops walking, and Mike does, too.

“Mike, you—”

“I know,” he interrupts. “I know.”

I know I wasn’t really. I know this is all just pretend.

Harvey rests his elbows on the barrier and smiles.

“You could always read the Barbri again,” he offers. “I’ve got a copy of _Anatomy of Corporate Law_ you might like, maybe I can dig up some of our old case files for you to go through.”

Mike smiles, too.

“Come on,” Harvey says, jerking his head back the way they came. “Let’s go home, I’ll show you where I keep my law books.”

Get up and get a move on, rookie.

You can be whatever.

\---

Hey, Mike, come here a minute.

Hey, Mike, I want to show you something.

Hey, Mike, what do you think of this?

Hey, Mike. Hey.

Mike isn’t here, but It doesn’t matter. The contents of the file haven’t changed, and they aren’t going to change, no matter how many times Harvey opens it, how many times he thumbs through the pages, how many times he just wants to double triple quadruple check, just to be sure. Really sure.

They’re not going to change. But that’s alright, that’s for the best; Wentworth isn’t even contesting the charges. And why would he. How could he? Harvey was there, he saw, he _knows—_

So anyway.

The date has finally been set for the deposition; Thursday, December third. It’s not ideal, but nothing really is, when it comes right down to it; until this whole suit is wrapped, until Wentworth and the State of New York have paid their dues, until Mike is back to his smart-mouthed, quick-witted self, until their lives shift into the new normal, wherever that is, until they can put all of this behind them, until it’s nothing more than a bad dream that wakes him sweating bullets in the dark until he remembers that Mike is here, Mike is alright, Mike is getting better, Mike is _alive—_

Well, until then.

December third. That’s not so bad; only a couple of weeks away. He’s ready now, and he’ll still be ready when the time comes. Mike, too; Mike will be ready. He’ll make sure of it.

Speak only when spoken to. Answer exactly what you’re asked. Don’t embellish. No extraneous details. You’ll be great. Everything will be just fine.

Just fine.

Harvey closes the file and sets it aside for good this time. No, really. That was his last look.

He picks up the corner, just one more time, just to be sure, and hates himself a little bit for doubting.

\---

Carvello v. Karinski. Moseley v. Folsom Foods. Hessington v. State of New York. Henderson vs. Liberty Rail.

Mike sits on the floor surrounded by folders with his handwriting scrawled across the front covers, a record of his evolution from rank impostor to full-blown fraud, and doesn’t put too much effort into remembering any of them. Carvello makes him nervous in the pit of his stomach, even though he’s pretty sure it all turned out alright; he doesn’t need to read that one, it’s fine. Henderson feels like camaraderie, feels like tough choices, and he doesn’t really need to read that one, either.

In re: Harvey Specter and Ava Hessington, Petitioner v. the State of New York to Hessington Oil. Within twenty (20) days after service of this subpoena, you are ordered by the Court…

Mike turns the paper over and slides it back into the file. This isn’t quite how it’s supposed to go, is it? Finding old things he’s written, old pieces of himself. There’s supposed to be an ah-ha moment, isn’t there, a remembrance of things past? An “Oh, damn, I haven’t thought about this in years”?

A hastily torn sheet of notepaper with the words “high-strung, sensitive, aggressive, etc.” scrawled across it in smudged ink is paperclipped to a stack of promotion records in the Moseley file, and the words must have meant something to him, once, something important. Important enough to write down, important enough to be worth the rush.

Yeah, whatever.

Rocking forward onto his knees, Mike reaches out to shove the folders back together into a pile, bracing his hands on the floor on either side as he stares down at the unassuming pages, the transcript of his history, a Rosetta stone of him that he doesn’t know how to read. This is work he’s done, good work, hard work, and he should be proud of everything he’s accomplished, all the struggles he’s overcome.

Wouldn’t that be nice.

Mike picks up the pile of folders and stands, shoving them back into the filing cabinet and slamming the drawer shut. Thanks, Harvey, that was a nice idea; it’s a shame it didn’t work out quite the way we wanted, but hey, we gave it a shot. It’s too bad real life isn’t more like the movies and the TV shows, isn’t it? Yeah, what a shame.

Nothing gets better, but we’ll try anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not going to apologize for my lithe physique, okay? And by the way, I was on the wrestling team in high school, so.”  
> —Mike (to Rachel), “[Undefeated](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s01e09)” (s01e09)
> 
> “I checked the review of every promotion from the last five years. Every time they don’t promote a woman, they use some combination of the same 16 words.”  
> “And the men?”  
> “No.”  
> “What are the words?”  
> “High-strung, sensitive, aggressive, abrasive—”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “[Zane vs. Zane](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s02e13)” (s02e13)
> 
> Frank Carvello is Mike’s client suing Johnny Karinski in “Dirty Little Secrets” (s01e04); the case is Mike’s first experience in housing court. Sloane Moseley is Mike and Harvey’s client in “Zane vs. Zane” (s02e13); the episode begins with Mike and Harvey playing a game of throwing balled-up papers into a wastebasket and ends with Robert Zane informing them that his firm is referring the case to Daniel Hardman. Ava Hessington being accused of murder is the major plot of the first half of Season 3 and ultimately leads to the dissolution of Pearson Darby Specter. Joe Henderson is the client whose whistleblower case against Liberty Rail Professor Gerard asks Mike to persuade Harvey to take on in “Derailed” (s04e14).
> 
> Kraakman, R., Armour, J., Davies, P., Enriques, L., Hansmann, H., Hertig, G., Hopt, K. J., Kanda, H., & Rock, E. B. (2009). _The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach_ (2nd Ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.  
> London, J. (2004). _Call of the Wild and White Fang_. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.  
> Shelley, M. (2003). _Frankenstein_. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.


	4. Chapter 4

From the outside looking in, today is simply another Thursday, no different from every other Thursday; in private, though, in the secret reality that only he knows, today isn’t merely “Thursday” but in fact “six more days until Tuesday,” which is the day Mike will go to the gym to work with Tracy for the first time. Today isn’t merely “Thursday” but five more days until the first time in a long time, as long as he can remember, that something is going to happen, the first day that has some meaning attached to it, some reason to get up and get on with things. His life is measured in the increments between events, time itself consisting of moments and countdowns and dead space, and this kind of presence, this kind of immediacy might be freeing, it might be fun, except for the part where he’s trapped under the weight of not knowing how to do anything else.

“On the 24th of May, 1863,” this moment says, “my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed into his little house, No. 19 Königstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest portion of the city of Hamburg.”

Mike opens _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ to the end to see how many pages this moment is going to last—two hundred and eighty-eight—and figures that it’s alright if not every moment is a really spectacular one.

Then the intercom buzzes, and the moment transforms quite suddenly into a different one that’s probably going to be much better, or maybe much worse, and Mike should probably stop reading, but he doesn’t know what to do with himself instead. Then the intercom buzzes again, and he has to answer it before somebody gets angry.

He presses a button that might carry his voice down to the lobby, and leans in toward the speaker.

“Hello?”

“Mister Ross,” the doorman says. “Rachel Zane is here to see you.”

Rachel Zane has to go to work, and early classes, and they haven’t seen each other in weeks, or months.

“Okay,” Mike says, pressing the button he accidentally guessed was the right one.

“Shall I send her up?” the doorman asks.

She’s making an effort. It would be rude to turn her away.

“Okay,” Mike says again, and the doorman doesn’t reply, so Mike goes into his room to grab a pair of blue jeans, pulling them on as he fumbles his way into the foyer to wait behind the door.

It’s only a few seconds, maybe a minute before Rachel knocks, and it’s a good thing he’s standing behind the door or he might’ve missed the timid sound. Maybe she’s nervous, maybe she’s shy.

Then he opens the door and looks down at her, and she looks up at him, and he waits, and she smiles, and he knows that she’s terrified, and maybe that’s why he lets her in.

“Harvey said you’d gotten out of the hospital,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I tried to come by on Sunday, but I guess you were out.”

“Yeah,” he says as she walks to the sofa, sitting carefully and looking back at him as though she’s waiting for instructions. “We were in the park.”

“Oh?” she says, smiling eagerly.

“Yeah, we went for a walk.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

He sits in one of the leather chairs on the other side of the coffee table and crosses his legs, drumming his fingers against the armrests to fill the silence until he comes up with something better to do with his hands. She laces her fingers together and places them on top of her knees, humming a contented sound as her smile widens and her eyes crease at the corners.

“I’m glad you’re doing well,” she says, and he wonders what she means by that.

“Thanks.”

She hums again, and he stops drumming his fingers.

“So,” he prompts, “what’s up?”

She tucks her hair behind her other ear.

“I haven’t seen you in such a long time,” she says, “I didn’t want you to get the impression that I didn’t care about you, or something like that. Not that I don’t know why you haven’t been around,” she hurries on, as though she startled herself with the insinuation that his temporary disappearance was his own doing. “But I still want us to be friends, I still want to be— I want to be here for you as much as I can.”

“Thank you,” he says, because that’s the sort of thing you say to a person who wants to be there for you, even though they don’t know how and the effort they’re making is a clumsy one.

“We’re all here for you,” she insists, speaking for people who might prefer to speak for themselves, all in the name of making him feel better. “You just have to keep looking ahead, you— We’re all so proud of you, and everything you’ve accomplished so far. Just gotta…keep going. You’re doing great.”

He smiles, even though she doesn’t really understand what life is like for him, and feels a little sick to his stomach, wondering if anyone ever will.

“I’m going to start boxing,” he says. “I have a training session at Harvey’s gym on Tuesday.”

“That’s great,” she gushes, smiling bright until she realizes what he’s just said and her lips part as her brow furrows dramatically. “Wait, you’re going to be boxing? What about your head?”

“The trainer knows,” he assures her, because Harvey made sure she understood the dangers. “It’ll be fine,” he says, even though he doesn’t know if that’s true.

Rachel frowns, pressing down on her knees. “Okay,” she says, “if you’re sure.”

It makes sense that she doesn’t think he knows how to take care of himself. He hasn’t had to do it for a long time.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, because he isn’t allowed to die anymore. Not after all of this.

She smiles uncertainly.

“Okay,” she says, because it’s better than saying nothing. “Well, I have to get to work, but I’m glad I got to see you. I’m glad you’re doing okay.”

“Yeah,” he says, standing from his chair, smiling when she follows his lead. “You too, thanks.”

She leaves without thinking twice about it, and whatever emotions she stirred up in him vanish without a trace the moment the door closes behind her.

Reset.

Start again.

\---

Mike calls Harvey at twelve thirty-four, mainly because he likes the way it looks on the digital clock. Harvey doesn’t answer, and he tells himself he shouldn’t be surprised, midday or thereabouts being a typical lunch hour, and puts it out of his mind the moment he hangs up the phone.

Twenty minutes later, he wonders if he should’ve left a message, and this is a stupid thing to start crying over, but knowing that doesn’t seem to be stopping him.

\---

“So,” Harvey says, smiling vaguely as he rinses their dinner dishes and puts them in the dishwasher. “What did you do today?”

I read a book. I watched TV. I had a thought. Harvey can’t be expecting much; then again, he doesn’t have much reason to. They go through these motions, they do this little dance every day, waiting with infinite patience for the change that’ll come on eventually, sooner or later, waiting for the day that the answer is something more than “Nothing.”

So why not today?

“Rachel came by this morning,” Mike says, casually, because this is nothing remarkable, this is business as usual. This is partway there, a step in the right direction, but nothing to get excited about.

“Oh,” Harvey says, mildly interested, because he’s following Mike’s lead on this one, he’ll play the game this way if it’s what Mike wants. “What was she looking for?”

“Just checking in,” Mike says, digging his nails into the seam of the leather sofa’s armrest and lowering his gaze to the coffee table. “You know, she wanted to make sure I knew she hadn’t forgotten about me, she still wants me to get better soon, she knows it’ll take time but I’ll get there eventually. Just saying hi.”

He runs his nails along the bumpy row of stitches hidden between the cushions.

“I told her about the boxing.”

Harvey turns off the tap.

Oh, maybe he shouldn’t have said that, maybe he shouldn’t have told her; was it supposed to be their little secret? Is Harvey going to get in trouble? No, he checked with Jason, he got permission, everything is fine, and Mike is just doing as he’s told. Everything is fine.

“What did she say?”

She said it was great. She said she was worried. She asked if he’d be okay. She asked if they were sure it was a good idea.

What did she say?

Mike can’t remember his lines.

“Mike?”

She said everything would be alright if they just gave it some time, if they could find it in themselves to wait, if they remembered what they were waiting for, if they could remember to keep looking forward toward a bright new day off in the distance somewhere, a shiny new future to aspire to, something to hope for, and Mike has never felt more alone in his entire life.

“Mike?”

“She said it sounds cool.”

Harvey smiles and closes the dishwasher, and maybe he doesn’t quite believe it, maybe he knows better than to think this is the whole truth, but he’ll give it to Mike, he’ll give him the win, and Mike will take it, he’ll be grateful for what he’s got. Mike will fit himself into the mold of what’s expected and the easy little lies will make them all happy, happier than the whole truth and nothing but the truth ever could.

Mike can do it.

Mike can do anything.

\---

Harvey listens for the click of the deadening line before slamming the receiver down into its cradle, briefly fearing that he’s cracked the shell before he figures it would probably take more force than that, and anyway, it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care. He’d break every goddamn utility in the office if he thought he could get away with it; Jessica deserves it for making him take on William fucking Sutter.

No, that’s not fair. She’s just doing her best to keep her firm running; Mike being out of commission has been hard on all of them, this isn’t just about him getting shafted. Big name clients like Sutter keep the revenue stream healthy, and in the long run, it’s better that cash flow is one less thing Harvey has to worry about.

Of course, if they could land some clients Sean Cahill wasn’t frothing at the mouth to indict for insider trading, that’d be great.

“Harvey?”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Heaving a great, world-weary sigh in the admittedly vain hope that it might frighten Louis off, Harvey looks up from his desk with his eyes narrowed to slits, ready to spit venom at the slightest provocation.

“What?”

Louis’s lips are pursed, his face pinched in that way it gets when he’s trying to do right by someone and sure that his efforts are going unappreciated.

“I just wanted to see if you’d gotten any updates on Mike’s deposition,” he says, pacing into the office and, to his credit, stopping just inside the door.

Harvey breathes out through his clenched teeth. “It’s December third,” he says. “At Moredock’s office downtown.”

“You’re going to her office?” Louis repeats, taking an abrupt step forward.

“That’s generally how a deposition works,” Harvey snipes. “You’d rather we do it by semaphore?”

“I don’t understand, why aren’t they coming here?”

“I don’t know, Louis!” Harvey cries, standing and slamming his hands down on his desk. “Because they asked me, and I said yes, because I’m a little more concerned about winning the ten million dollar settlement I’m shoving down their throats than I am with where we are when I do it!”

“You’re only pursuing ten million dollars?” Louis accuses, pacing closer still, and it takes a tremendous effort for Harvey to keep from throwing something at him.

“I’ll be lucky to get one million and you know it,” he snaps, leaning forward and putting a strain on his shoulder blades. “I ask for more and they’ll laugh me right out of the room, you want me to set myself up to fail?”

“Harvey, you can’t let them get away with this.”

“Exactly how is this any of your business?”

Louis frowns perplexedly. “It’s Mike,” he says, like Harvey is the one being slow. “It’s all of our business.”

Of course it is. Because this is Mike, and everybody cares about Mike.

Harvey falls back into his chair, and Louis’s expression softens understandingly, and Harvey knows Louis would give him whatever he wants right now if he could be bothered to ask.

“So was that phone call from Moredock’s office?” Louis asks as though the simple act of speaking her name is enough to give him a contagious disease, a kindly attempt to commiserate even though she’s a just and dignified woman and Harvey doesn’t bear her any particularly ill will.

“That was Sean Cahill,” Harvey corrects. “He’s got his eye on William Sutter for insider trading.”

“Insider trading?” Louis says keenly. Harvey scowls up at him.

“What, are you looking to get five in a row in your Criminal Offenses Bingo card?”

“Harvey, I’m a financial law specialist.” Louis places his hand on Harvey’s desk. “You need someone to go through the last five, ten years of all his big money trades, I’m your guy.”

Everybody cares about Mike.

Harvey sighs and rests his forehead in his hands.

“Thanks, Louis.”

Louis smiles and nods and doesn’t even ask him to repeat himself.

\---

“Morning,” Mike recites as he grabs a piece of whole wheat bread from the loaf on the counter and drops it into the toaster oven. “You got any jelly?”

“Check the fridge,” Harvey says, glancing toward it and raising his coffee mug to his lips. “You got any plans for today?”

As if he doesn’t know.

Mike quirks his lip as the coils inside the oven begin to glow. “Not yet.”

“The deposition for your case is scheduled for next Thursday,” Harvey says, leaping at the opening with forced casualness. “I was thinking we could start prepping for you to give your testimony.”

Deposition testimony? Well, sure; Mike was hit by a car, and that’s a crime, isn’t it? And Harvey’s a lawyer, isn’t he, and he cares about Mike, and he’ll want to see that justice is served in his honor. And Mike needs to be prepared, doesn’t he, he needs to be trained and prepped to do this thing he’s probably done a million times, this thing he could probably do in his sleep in his other life, before.

No, no; we’re not doing this again.

“Yeah,” Mike says, “sounds good. Just lemme finish breakfast first.”

Harvey looks sort of sadly at the darkening toast until the oven chimes and the light of the heating coils begins to fade.

“I’ve got to get some things together first anyway.”

Mike nods, sliding his toast onto a plate and grabbing a knife out of the drawer next to the sink. There’s a jar of apricot jelly on the refrigerator door; he would’ve preferred blueberry, but this is alright for now.

\---

“Okay,” Harvey says as he opens the case file and sets it down on the coffee table between them, turning it around so Mike gets to be the one to read it right side up. “This should all be pretty routine; I met the guy who hit you when we were at the hospital in Stony Brook, he was pretty apoplectic about the whole thing and he’s accepting fault for all of it, and Joanna’s a hard-line constitutionalist, but she’s not a monster, she won’t try to make this into anything other than what it is. The only thing we have to worry about from her is how much she’ll try to lowball us on the settlement, but I’ll take care of that.”

Mike murmurs his assent, his eyes softening and going out of focus as he stares down at the file. Harvey smiles the way he does when he wishes he could find the humor in something that doesn’t have any.

“Most of their questions will just be to get your side of the story on the record,” he goes on. “This deposition is mostly a technicality, but we don’t want to go in blind, considering how much money is on the table.”

“Money?” Mike glances up. “Why, how much money are we talking?”

Harvey shakes his head. “I don’t know for sure; maybe a million. We’ll see how it turns out.”

A million dollars to ease his suffering, a million dollars to call them even. A million dollars to apologize for knocking him sideways into this other life where nothing means anything and happiness never lasts for more than a few seconds at a time. Of course, that’s how these things go, though, isn’t it; they can’t wave a magic wand to fix all his problems, so they’ll throw money at him instead, which is the next best thing. He should be grateful that he’s getting anything, he should be grateful that he’s alive.

Yeah, yeah.

“Okay,” Mike says, “so what’re they gonna ask me?”

Harvey leans over the table, setting his finger down on a line that reads “QUALIFIED ORDER” in bold letters. “The number one thing I want you to remember,” he says, “is to keep your answers short. Don’t elaborate. Don’t give them any new information, don’t get emotional, this is all routine and we want to get in and out as quickly as we can. Okay?”

Mike nods. Harvey does, too.

“Okay.”

Mike nods again. Harvey sits back in his chair.

“Alright. Mike, where were you on the afternoon of July third of this year?”

Mike frowns. “Was that the day I got hit?”

Harvey presses his lips together and folds his hands in his lap.

“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “But if you don’t know something, if they ask you any questions and you don’t know the answer, just say ‘I don’t know.’ No guessing, alright?”

“Okay.”

Harvey nods.

“Mike, where were you on the afternoon of July third of this year?”

“The Hamptons.”

Harvey raises his eyebrows. “You remember that?”

Mike shrugs, clasping his hands together. “I remember you told me that’s where we were when I got hit.”

“But you don’t remember getting hit, do you?”

Mike tilts his head a little, and Harvey waves his hand dismissively.

“Forget it, forget I asked. Look, any questions you have answers for because someone told you about something you forgot, just, just say ‘I don’t remember,’ okay?”

Do you remember?

“Where were you on the afternoon of July third of this year?”

“I don’t remember.”

Harvey smiles.

“You’re gonna do great.”

Mike smiles, too.

Alright then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m trying to finesse canon content into this story whenever possible, hence Cahill investigating Sutter’s insider trading (s06e05-08) and Louis helping Harvey go through Sutter’s big money trade history when Harvey is freaking out about Mike (s06e07).
> 
> Verne, J. (2005). _Journey to the Center of the Earth_. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.


	5. Chapter 5

Monday night, with the very best of intentions, Mike sets the alarm clock on the bedside table to ring at seven o’clock the next morning. Just in case.

Tuesday morning, quite by accident, Mike wakes up well before the alarm, at twelve minutes after six. Just because.

But, well. Today’s the day. Today is the first day that something’s going to happen, the first day with something in it for him to aspire to, something to wait for, something to look forward to, and Mike is excited! Mike is thrilled! Today will be a good day, today will be the day that Mike starts to be a real person again; today, Mike will be a person who wants things, a person who does things, who hopes and works and fights for things. Today will be a good day, today will be the day that Mike is terrified of something new and does it anyway, the day that he embarks into the great unknown without fear, without hesitation, without restraint. Today will be a good day, and Mike can’t wait to get started.

Mike looks at the alarm clock. Fifteen minutes after six.

Today’s the day. Today is the day that Mike is excited, and thrilled, and terrified, and can’t wait to get started.

Eighteen minutes after six. Mike turns off the alarm.

Today is Tuesday.

\---

“So, you ready for boxing?” Harvey asks enthusiastically as they climb into the backseat of the idling Mercedes Benz, Harvey in his three-piece suit, a briefcase full of case files and ballpoint pens at his feet, and Mike in his grubby t-shirt and jeans, a backpack with a pair of gym shorts inside cradled in his lap.

“Yeah,” Mike says, having no particular expectations of the future.

Harvey hums contentedly as Ray begins to drive. “Tracy’s great,” he says. “I think you’ll like her.”

Mike hums too, uncertain of what he means by that and not caring quite enough to ask.

The ride isn’t a long one; about eight minutes, maybe nine. They probably should have walked. They didn’t, though, and Harvey shoves his door open with a certain urgency about him that makes Mike wonder if there’s something going on that he doesn’t know about.

“Your session’s at ten,” Harvey says as he walks toward the gym. “I’m sorry I can’t stay and wait with you, but Sutter’s case hit a couple of snags and we’re all hands on deck for the next few days. But I wanted to come with you the first time, just to make sure you got set up okay.” He looks back at Mike, making his way over from the car.

“How does that sound?”

Sounds like about what Mike expected.

“Okay,” Mike says, trying to pitch his voice in such a way as to make it clear that he understands that this is just the way things are.

Harvey smiles, and he figures he must’ve gotten pretty close.

A person Mike doesn’t recognize sits at the front desk today, a young Asian woman staring intently at her computer screen, who looks up with a practiced smile as they draw near.

“Hi Harvey,” she chirps. “Are you looking for Nick?”

Harvey smirks, shifting his shoulders back to accentuate the lines of his suit a little more clearly. “Hi Jun,” he says. “No, actually, I’m looking for Tracy.”

Jun frowns minutely, her eyes darting past him to the floor and immediately back to his face. “I haven’t seen her come in yet, do you have a session scheduled with her?”

“Not until ten.” Harvey puts his hand on Mike’s back and nudges him a step forward. “This is Mike, my associate; he’s going to start training with her today, I’m just dropping him off.”

“Oh,” she says thoughtfully. “Okay, well, I mean you can sit here and wait for her,” she points to a small wooden bench by the door, “and if you want to get changed or anything, the locker room’s right over there.”

“Thanks,” Mike says. Harvey smiles again, and Jun smiles too, looking around the gym one more time before she turns back to her computer.

“Alright,” Harvey says, “I’ve set up the payments and the scheduling— Tuesdays and Thursdays at ten, but if that doesn’t work for you, if you need to change it, just let me know and we can work something out. But for now I fixed everything up with Tracy, you just worry about showing up and working out, and Ray will be back here to pick you up at eleven and bring you back home. Or if you want to go somewhere else,” he adds hastily, “just let him know.”

Mike nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”

Harvey pats him on the shoulder.

“Have fun.”

Mike nods.

Watching Harvey walk out the door, his eye catches on a unicorn balloon tied to the small wooden bench where he’s supposed to sit and wait for his session with Tracy, which is scheduled to begin two hours from now. It’s not a particularly comfortable bench, but it’s not as bad as it looks; he sits up close to the armrest and tugs on the balloon string.

At least he has some company.

Truthfully, Mike isn’t quite sure why he’s being so histrionic about all of this; one hour later, he isn’t even bored. The boxers are mildly interesting to watch; most of them are mediocre, or decent, or good, though he can’t really tell the difference, but a few are clearly masters of the craft, and one is truly terrible, which is amusing in a schadenfreude sort of way that he keeps to himself. Even when no one in particular is attracting his attention, just sitting quietly is somehow enough to occupy the time.

Where was all this tranquility in his rebellious youth?

Tracy arrives twenty minutes early and seems impressed that Mike is waiting for her, and maybe the last hour and a half have all been worth it. He stands, rubbing his hands on his thighs, and she beckons him toward the punching bags.

“Before you change,” she says, looking impassively toward his jeans, “let me see you throw a forward jab. I just wanna get a sense of where we’re starting from.”

Trying to remember the ferocity and grace that so enraptured his attention only moments ago, Mike squares his shoulders and thrusts his fist forward into the air, making sure to keep his wrist twisted so that his knuckles point toward the ceiling. Tracy nods, folding her arms and settling her weight to one side, and he shakes his arms out as though the move had some kind of impact.

“Go change, and we’ll get started.”

Mike trots off toward the locker rooms, holding tight to the straps of his backpack and feeling like a grade schooler. When he returns to the punching bags, all decked out in his faded old gym shorts, Tracy has her red fleece jacket tied around her waist, thick focus pads strapped to her hands, and a resoluteness in her eyes that he knows he’s seen before in Harvey’s, though he can’t remember exactly when, or why.

“Put those on,” she says, gesturing toward a pair of red boxing gloves in the equipment bag on the floor behind her. “So, let’s start with your form. Right now you’re punching just with your arm, see—” she mimics his naïve attempt in slow motion “—so your only power comes from the muscles in your arms, it’s all your strength and nothing else. Now I know you were in the hospital for a long time, and I don’t know what your workout regime was like before that but it’s not surprising that you lost a lot of muscle mass, especially since you were in a coma, and we can work on that, but even someone who lifts weights regularly isn’t going to get too much power out of a punch that only uses his arm muscles.”

Nodding like he understands where she’s going with this, Mike straps his left hand into the left glove and fumbles to grasp the velcro of the right through the bulky padding, finally pulling it taut with his teeth as he thinks about how nice it is that she’s not dancing around his history, pretending it’s anything other than exactly what it is. That was a hard thing he went through, and he’s weaker now because of it, and all his strength of character or whatever doesn’t make up for the fact that his body is fragile in a way that he can’t get past just by living one day to the next and hoping for the best.

“So you’ve gotta put your whole body into it,” she goes on, twisting away from him and back. “Like a coiled spring. Give that a shot.”

Bending his knees, Mike pulls his arm back and hauls off, landing a punch into the left focus pad with a decent _thump._ Tracy nods, narrowing her eyes, and Mike squares up again.

“Not bad,” she says. “You’re telegraphing way too much, but that’ll come with practice. For now let’s just work on your power, getting the technique down.”

“Telegraphing?” Mike asks, stepping back and shifting his weight from side to side.

“Your windup,” Tracy explains. “It’s huge, I can see you coming a mile away; there’s no way you’d land a punch in a real fight.”

So you’re doomed before you begin, in other words. You’re going to fail no matter what, no two ways about it. You’re only any good when it’s all pretend, in this bubble where you live in this fake world that you’ve designed.

Mike nods. Okay. Okay.

“Let’s just practice for awhile,” Tracy decides, clapping the pads together and setting her stance. “It’s your first time out, let’s get the basics down before we try anything fancy, and then at the end, we’ll work on your power. The last few minutes or so, you can really let out some aggression, how about that.”

Mike doesn’t mention that he doesn’t know that he really has any aggression to let out just now, but she’s trying to be nice about all this, and he doesn’t want to disappoint her.

Tracy claps the pads together again.

“Let’s go.”

So for about an hour, they do. Mike does. For fifty-two minutes, he bounces on the balls of his feet and practices his form, stopping every now and again for Tracy to set her hands on his shoulders and adjust his posture, or ask him which muscle groups he feels activating when he does this or that, or rotate his hips to show him how to improve his speed. She compliments him when he twists enough for his heel to come up off the ground and she criticizes him when he has too much follow-through, and she lets him get water when he starts coughing and she hands him a towel when he gets sweat in his eyes, and he knows he’s terrible but it still feels like an accomplishment, like this is something he really can get better at instead of just something everyone likes to pretend he will because they don’t know what will happen if he doesn’t.

“Good,” she says with a certain finality in her voice, lowering the pads as he leans over and starts panting. “Now we’ve got about five minutes left, what do you say we take it to the bag for a couple of shots? Just a few punches, I know you’re tired but this is good practice for later.”

Mike nods as Tracy sheds the focus pads, tossing them into her equipment bag and going to one of the heavy bags on the other side of the mat area.

“Come on.” She thumps the side of the bag, and it swings a little. “Lemme see what you got.”

Dutifully, Mike traipses over and raises his gloves up to protect his face.

“Anyone you’re mad at?” Tracy asks with a grin. “Whose face are you imagining right here?”

Mike narrows his eyes at the white Everlast logo, bopping it with the front of his glove and wondering if it feels anything like hitting a real person.

“I dunno,” he says. “No one.”

“Alright, that’s fine,” Tracy says, glancing at the clock on the wall beside them. “You don’t have anything to vent about, that’s okay, but I still wanna see some power here. Come on.”

Mike sets his stance and glares at the bag. His first punch lands with a dull thud, and Tracy nods approvingly.

“Again.”

_I’m glad you’re doing well._

Are you, Rachel? Are you glad? Are you glad things are moving along fine without you, are you glad you can drop by whenever you have time to check in on me and then run off to live your life however you want?

“Good,” Tracy says. “Again.”

_Where were you on the afternoon of July third of this year?_

Where was I, mister lawyer man? Was I walking across the street, was I smashed up against the hood of your client’s car, was I laid out flat on my back with blood filling up my skull as the bones broke all up and down my body? Was my brain being battered and bruised, was my life being drained away and leaving a big, dark hole that I have to spend the rest of my life trying to fill with stuff that’ll never get me back to the place I used to be, to the person I was before?

Tracy smiles. “There it is.”

_There’s my miracle man._

Am I, Doctor? Am I your miracle man, are you so proud of how wonderful I’m doing now? Are you so impressed by how much better I am, by how good I look on the outside, how well I can hold a fork or string together a sentence? Are you going to write about me in medical journals, are you going to brag about me to your colleagues, are you going to remember me fondly, your big accomplishment, as I cry myself to sleep and wonder what it feels like to die and tell myself that this is just how things have to be?

“Alright, one more.”

_I’d take it all back if I could._

Oh, would you, Harvey? Do you feel bad? Are you sorry? Do you feel guilty that it was all your idea that put me out there in the first place? That we were there together, you and me, on the same road at the same time, getting out of the same car, just a few seconds apart, a few seconds between _you_ being the guy who got hit? Between it being _your_ life that was upended, _your_ brain rattled around in your skull, everything that makes up who _you_ are ripped to shreds and burned to ash and thrown out to sea? You’re _sorry_ about all of that? Really truly sorry? Does that make it better, is everything all fixed now because you’re _sorry?_

“Nice work.”

Mike presses his gloved hands down on his knees and breathes his labored breaths as sweat drips down the side of his face, down his neck, seeping into his shirt collar.

He isn’t mad. He isn’t. It’s no one’s fault things turned out the way they did, and everyone is just doing the best they can with what they have.

“How’re you feeling?”

Mike tries to stop panting quite so hard.

“Pretty good.”

Tracy nods.

“This was a good first day,” she says. “I know we only really worked on one punch, you’ve still got a ways to go, but you’re picking it up pretty quick so far, I’m impressed.”

Mike tries to pick the velcro straps open with his clumsy gloves.

“Thanks.”

Tracy reaches over to pull his gloves off for him. “So I’ll see you this time Thursday?”

“Yeah.” Mike rubs his sweaty hands on his shorts. “Thanks.”

Tracy smiles. “Tell Harvey I said hi.”

“Okay,” Mike says, but Tracy’s already turned her attentions to her next client, a tiny girl in black leggings and a tight black crop top jumping rope at probably about a hundred miles per hour. Mike thinks about trying to say goodbye to Tracy, but he doesn’t want to distract either of them.

Pulling his jeans on over his shorts, he picks at his wet t-shirt and decides that on Thursday, he’ll bring a complete change of clothes.

\---

Twelve o’clock; even if he went out after boxing, Mike should be home by now, or at least free to talk. Harvey only has a few minutes before he promised to check in with Louis about his findings on Sutter’s trades, but he shouldn’t need much more than that to get a quick rundown of the session.

The phone rings, and Harvey cradles the receiver against his shoulder.

Everything probably went fine; Tracy is a great trainer, and she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Mike or push him somewhere dangerous. Especially not on the first day. Anyway, she’s been training fighters for years, she knows what she’s doing.

The phone rings, and Harvey drums his fingers against the glass surface of his desk.

Mike might not even be free to chat. Harvey did tell him he could go out after he finished at the gym, if he wanted, that Ray would take him anywhere he asked to go, and he’s probably getting pretty tired of being cooped up in the apartment every day. Maybe the deposition is stressing him out, maybe he went for a walk, maybe his phone is on mute. Maybe he’s asleep.

The call goes to voicemail, and Harvey hangs up without leaving a message.

Maybe he doesn’t want to talk.

\---

It’s not quite six when Harvey gets home Tuesday night, which doesn’t surprise Mike at all, though the sound of the door unlocking still somehow manages to startle him quite a lot. Whatever; Harvey will be glad the session with Tracy went well, Mike thinks. He’ll be glad they’re going to keep it up.

“Hey,” Harvey says, shedding his jacket as he walks into the living room with a calm smile on his face. “How was your day?”

Mike tilts his head back, leaning into the sofa and folding his legs underneath him. “Good,” he says. “The boxing was good. Tracy said I picked it up pretty quickly.”

“Oh yeah?” Harvey sits in one of the leather chairs, craning his neck to look up at Mike as he leans over to untie his shoes. “That’s great. So you’re gonna keep with it?”

“I think so.” Mike presses his hands down in his lap. “It’s good exercise.”

“You have fun?”

Mike smiles and tries to remember if maybe there was a moment when that was true.

“Yeah.”

Harvey grins and slips his shoes off.

“Great.”

Then Harvey clears his throat, and Mike wonders if something important happened today.

“I tried to call you this afternoon,” he says casually.

Do you feel guilty, Harvey? Do you feel bad?

“I couldn’t find my phone,” Mike invents, reaching under his legs to grab onto his feet. His right sock has a hole in the heel, but it would be silly to throw it out over something as small as that.

“I figured,” Harvey assures him. “You find it yet?”

It was in my hand.

Mike nods. “It was in my backpack.”

“Oh.” Harvey smiles. “I thought you might’ve gone out without it.”

Mike’s lips quirk in a pitiful little grin. “Nope.”

“You can, you know.” Harvey clears his throat. “If you want to. Go out by yourself.”

You might, you know. Find yourself smeared across the hood of some poor bastard’s Toyota Corolla. Just one of those things.

Mike shrugs, smiling far too wide for such a small suggestion. “I know,” he says, “but at least when I’m here I have my guard dog.”

Harvey narrows his eyes and tilts his head, just a little.

_Shit._

Mike bites the inside of his cheek, but Harvey only furrows his brow.

“You got a German Shepherd somewhere around here that I don’t know about?”

Mike chuckles.

“No,” he dismisses, “there’s this little stuffed dog on one of the bookshelves in my room, I guess I’m kind of attached.”

Surely Harvey wouldn’t take it away if Mike thinks it’s special, would he? He wouldn’t take away something that makes him happy, that gives him comfort, no matter how small.

Sure enough, Harvey smiles warmly, his face softening as he leans back in his chair and rests his hands on his stomach.

“You don’t remember where it came from, do you?”

Mike glares at him, and Harvey winces.

“Sorry,” he says, sitting up a little straighter. “I’m sorry. It came from the hospital. Well, it— Not exactly, I mean I gave it to you while you were in the hospital. I got it at a toy store. I just— I mean, you got along so well with Mango, I thought…maybe you’d like it.”

A vague recollection of a purple giraffe with giant glassy eyes skips through Mike’s mind for no particular reason he can think of, and he’d go into his room to get the dog right now if he wasn’t in the middle of a conversation.

“I had it in the hospital?” he asks instead. Harvey smiles again.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You didn’t have much with you at Sinai,” he carries on more clearly, “just some clothes that Rachel brought over, a couple of books; flowers, balloons, toys people picked up at the hospital gift shop or something, the uh. The ring, after Rachel gave it back.”

Mike hums softly, nestling into the pillows at his back. The ring that belonged to his grandmother, of course. He probably ought to hang onto it, being that she’s dead and all.

Is she really? Yes, of course. He knew that.

“I brought it all back here,” Harvey says, “except the balloons and the flowers, they—deflated, and, died, but the clothes are in with all your other clothes, the books are on your shelves, the ring is—in the closet, with a few of the other stuffed animals. I’ll get rid of them if you want,” he blusters, “I didn’t want to throw anything away you might want to keep, but we can go through it all together at some point. Whenever you want.”

Mike smiles wanly, pressing his palm into the sofa cushions.

“Thanks, Harvey.”

Do you feel guilty?

Do you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gym standing in for Harvey’s is [Overthrow](https://overthrownyc.com/), a boxing gym about four blocks from 25 Cooper Square (my preferred setting for Harvey’s apartment).


	6. Chapter 6

Saturday morning, at ten thirty or thereabouts, Mike and Harvey sit complacently at the kitchen counter, eating cubed melon and buttered toast, until Mike sets his hands in his lap and stares a thousand yards into the living room at an entirely different dimension that Harvey can’t see, and would very much like to imagine except that he doesn’t know where to begin.

Then Mike sighs loudly and says, “Do I like jazz?”

Harvey cocks his eyebrow and spears a piece of melon with his fork. What a funny question.

“Everybody likes jazz.”

Mike doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and Harvey tries not to take it personally. This is one of those things that will get better in time; everything’s gonna be alright.

“Never mind,” Mike mutters eventually.

“No, no,” Harvey says, dropping his fork into his bowl with a clatter. “Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know. Do you want to listen to some now and see what you think?”

Mike looks blankly at the living room, into the other world that only he knows, and Harvey needs to know more, he needs to do better, he needs to be prepared for these kinds of things.

“Do _you_ like jazz?” Mike asks after a minute, and Harvey smiles a little.

“Yeah,” he says. “My dad was a saxophone player, I kind of grew up with it.”

“Oh,” Mike says, as though that explains everything. He picks his toast up and takes a bite, and Harvey’s glad he found the resolution he was looking for.

Setting his toast back down on his plate, Mike gets a glassy sort of look in his eyes, and Harvey wonders what he’s thinking now, but it seems rude to ask.

\---

Mike stands before his open closet door, staring down the neatly hanging rows of shirts and slacks, the piles of folded t-shirts and jeans, that one rolled-up pair of socks that fell on the floor sometime yesterday and that he hasn’t bothered to pick up yet. He’s supposed to be getting ready for the deposition; “dress for court,” Harvey said, even though they’re just going to be sitting around a conference table at Joanna Moredock’s office, getting in and out as quickly as they can.

Where were you on the afternoon of July third of this year?

Mike picks out a pair of black pants that look about the same as all the other pairs of black pants and a navy blue shirt that’s just a little bit shiny and feels nice when it slips between his fingers. Harvey always wears a jacket to work; should Mike wear a jacket today? There are a few hanging along the wall, a grey and a blue and a couple of black ones, and he might as well.

Mister Ross, do you remember the events of that day?

This’ll be easy. He and Harvey have practiced every day for almost two weeks; he knows all the questions they’re going to ask, he knows exactly what he’s supposed to say. Plus, this morning, Tracy let him practice hooks for the first time, and he only had to watch her demonstrate the proper form twice before he stopped doing it in a way that made his shoulder hurt where his clavicle healed crooked, so that’s good.

Mister Ross, do you remember being struck by the defendant’s vehicle?

Mike shrugs on the black jacket that seems to best match his black pants and buttons the top button, the way he’s seen Harvey do when he goes to work in the morning. He’s going to a real deposition where real lawyers will be making real legal arguments at each other over real contracts, and he’s gotta look the part.

No ma’am, I don’t remember anything.

\---

Despite having gone up against her his fair share over the years, Harvey realizes abruptly as they ride the elevator up to the fourth floor that he’s never actually been to Moredock’s office. Which is fine from a logistical standpoint, being that having it out in court or at PSL is very much to Harvey’s advantage, but this isn’t about him anymore, this is about Mike, and he really should have prepared better. He should know what’s coming, he should know what he’s getting into. What he’s bringing Mike into. Whether this was all a big mistake or what, how badly he might’ve fucked everything up now that it’s too late to do anything about it.

The door opens on a long hallway and a placard on the wall pointing them to the left, toward the door at the end with the words “BELL LAW FIRM PLLC” printed across it in clean black lettering. Harvey lets them in without announcement or any kind of fanfare, and Mike walks in without seeming to have much of an interest in their surroundings.

“Harvey Specter,” Harvey says to the young man sitting at the reception desk. “I have a meeting with Miss Moredock.”

“She’s expecting you,” the man says primly, sitting up straight in his desk chair and offering a professional smile as he gestures vaguely toward the offices to his right. “They’re in Conference Room Two.”

Harvey nods, laying his hand on Mike’s back and urging him down the wood-paneled hall, so different from the antiseptic sleekness he calls home at PSL. Mike screws up his face at the scent of watery tomato soup emanating from behind the first door they pass, though the smell has mostly dissipated by the time they make it to the conference room and his expression settles back to cordial impassivity as he rubs underneath his nose.

So that’s probably not a deal breaker.

“Harvey,” Moredock says as they open the door, grinning her crooked grin and holding herself with all the self-assured toughness earned over the course of her fifty-odd years of practice. Harvey smiles back, doing his best to ignore Roy Wentworth cowering in his seat beside her and hoping Mike can find it in himself to do the same.

“Joanna,” he replies. “What do you say we get this over with?”

“Works for me.”

Harvey pulls out Mike’s chair for him, nudging him toward it just a bit before he sits in the one beside, clearing his throat as he tugs himself closer to the table’s edge. The stenographer seated in the corner opens her stenotype, and Mile takes his seat quietly, and they’ve done this a million times before. Everything is going to run like clockwork.

Mike sits quietly and sets his hands in his lap, and Harvey coughs.

“I trust you received a copy of our suit,” he says, unearthing a draft from his briefcase and placing it between them. The gears are turning smoothly, everything is slotting into place.

“Of course I did,” she says, arching her eyebrows and straightening the papers laid out before her. “Ten million dollars, Harvey, really?”

Mike narrows his eyes suddenly, and Harvey smirks as he tries not to wince. “Gotta start somewhere.”

Pausing a moment, Moredock finally deigns to nod as she takes her seat as well. “Fair enough. Mike, if you’re ready?”

Mike watches her evenly, and Harvey hopes he isn’t too unnerved by the fact that Harvey doesn’t seem to be able to look away. “I’m ready,” Mike says to Moredock, who smiles and folds her hands on the table in front of her.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” the stenographer asks briskly. Mike glances at Harvey as though to seek confirmation that this is all normal procedure, and Harvey nods subtly, though Mike doesn’t seem to register it.

“Yes,” he says to the woman, who sets her fingers on the keypad and looks to Joanna.

“Mister Ross,” Moredock begins in a tone balanced comfortably between smugness and geniality. “Can you tell me what events transpired on the date of July third, two thousand and fifteen?”

Mike blinks deliberately.

“I don’t remember.”

Good boy, Mike. Just like we practiced.

Moredock’s lips quirk up in a quick grin, and she shifts a little in her seat. “You have no recollection of having been hit by a car on that date?”

Mike thins his lips.

“No.”

Roy Wentworth keeps his eyes fixed studiously on the court reporter, and Harvey laces his fingers together to keep from reaching for Mike’s shoulder. He’s doing fine.

“I see.” Moredock drums the fingers of her right hand against the tabletop. “Mister Ross, is it true that you were recently released from Mount Sinai hospital?”

Mike nods. “Yes.”

Moredock smiles again. “And what were you doing there?”

“I was an in-patient,” Mike replies promptly, which is an imperfect answer, but it’ll serve their purposes for the time being.

“Do you remember your intake date?”

Mike’s eyes dart away and then back to Moredock, and Harvey immediately shatters the thought that Mike ought to be able to calculate “July third plus two weeks” in his head in an instant. Things are different now, but it’s alright. They’re adjusting, they’re getting on.

“No.”

It’s okay. This is going just fine.

Moredock glances down at the shallow stack of papers in front of her. “Do you remember when you were released?”

It might be an illusion, his imagination running wild, but Harvey thinks he sees the first spark of nervousness in Mike’s expression, a fleeting stillness in his bearing, and Harvey tightens his gently clasped hands to keep from reaching out for him.

“I don’t remember.”

Moredock seems genuinely surprised by the response, and Harvey stomps down on his instinct to smirk. They’re all working toward the same goal here, they all want what’s best for Mike. They do. Don’t forget.

“Mister Ross,” Moredock tries again, “did you receive any form of therapy during your stay at Mount Sinai Hospital?”

“Yes,” Mike says firmly, back on solid ground. Good, that’s good. Quick recovery.

“To the best of your recollection,” Moredock says, which is a kindness of her, “what therapy or therapies did you receive in that time?”

Mike frowns. “Physical therapy,” he recounts, “occupational therapy, um, group therapy. And—psychotherapy.”

Moredock nods slowly, stopping only when it becomes obvious that Mike isn’t going to carry on. “Do you have any recollection of receiving any form of speech therapy?”

Leading the witness, your honor.

“Ye— No,” he fumbles. “I don’t remember meeting with a therapist, but I remember being in my room and doing speech exercises.”

They’re never going to understand why this all turned out the way it did, are they?

Harvey sighs under his breath.

“Alright,” Moredock says, picking up her documents and dropping them against the table to even out the edge. “That’s all we need for now. Erica, I’ll need your transcript by the end of the day tomorrow; Mister Ross, it was lovely to meet you. Harvey, always a pleasure.”

The court reporter closes her stenotype, and Mike looks around as though someone’s pulling some kind of particularly cruel joke that everyone else is trying not to laugh at.

“That’s it?” he asks, a spiteful accusation at all of them for dragging him through this charade for what, for nothing.

It’ll all be worth it in the end, Mike, I promise. If you can just hold on a little while longer.

“Thank you for coming in,” Moredock says, sounding genuinely grateful for his time. “You’ve been very helpful.”

Roy Wentworth tries to smile at Mike, and Harvey busies himself with his coat to keep from throwing himself across the table and smashing his face into the wall. Mike looks at all of them with a confounded sort of expression frozen on his face before he schools it into blankness, sitting quietly for another couple of seconds before he stands beside Harvey, waiting to be told what to do next.

“Yeah,” he says through a rigid smile, “you too.”

And it doesn’t mean anything, anything at all, but it makes Harvey’s chest hurt all the same.

“Harvey,” Moredock says, “we’ll be in touch to work out the details of the settlement.”

Harvey smiles and nods and lays his hand on Mike’s back to urge him out the door.

This is one step on a long and winding journey. This is one small thing that we have to suffer through. This is one of those things that didn’t quite live up to the hype.

This is progress.

\---

It seems sort of pointless for Harvey to go back into the office once they get home; it’s already past four o’clock, and he can write up his notes on the deposition overlooking Cooper Triangle just as easily as he can overlooking the FedEx across the street from PSL. Besides, Mike might have questions about what happened; really, everything is much easier this way. And being that they both skipped lunch, or forgot about it, an early dinner doesn’t seem like such a bad idea; they’ll order in some Chinese, or maybe Mexican. Whatever Mike wants will be fine.

“I’m not hungry,” Mike mutters, pulling his jacket tighter around him and shuffling toward his room.

Harvey frowns. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“I got a Cliff bar at the gym.”

“The gym doesn’t sell Cliff bars,” Harvey says, trailing after him. “Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“Hey, come on.” Harvey reaches out to grab Mike’s shoulder, but Mike throws him off violently, pulling his arm around to his chest.

“ _Nothing._ ”

Pressing his lips together, Harvey takes a second to consider the ramifications of pushing somewhere that’s going to hurt, somewhere that’s already hurting, versus letting Mike have his way, letting him go at his own pace.

It’s for the best.

“Look,” he presses, “you’re obviously upset, but I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Tensing the line of his shoulders, Mike takes a second to collect himself, to make sure everything’s under control before he says something he’ll regret.

“Ten million dollars,” he grinds out then, and Harvey has the terrible sense that Mike doesn’t particularly care about anything at the moment.

“We have to highball them to start,” Harvey says. It’s a reasonable tactic, Mike is a reasonable guy; even if he doesn’t have the instinct in him anymore—doesn’t have it _back yet,_ he should be able to see the logic in it.

“Yeah.” Mike glares over his shoulder, turning slowly. “And you told me there was a million dollars on the table.”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Harvey says, choosing not to mention that even one million is going to be a reach. “I’m sorry, Mike, I should’ve been up front with you about it, but that’s just the way these things work.”

“You made me prep for _weeks,_ ” Mike snaps, a wild tangent that makes Harvey reel back a step. “Every single _day_ we went over those questions, and you told me I was _prepared,_ and I looked like an _idiot._ ”

Harvey furrows his brow. “The speech therapy thing?” he guesses. “Mike, you answered the question as best you could, you did fine.”

“Do you have _any_ idea what life is like for me?” Mike shouts, taking an abrupt step forward that Harvey’s ashamed to recoil from. “Everyone expecting me to, to act like some guy I’m not, they’re expecting me to _say_ things, and to _think_ things, to _know_ things, and I _don’t,_ and I _should,_ and I feel like a fucking failure at _everything!_ ”

“Mike,” Harvey cuts in, “you were hit by a car, you had— You have a traumatic brain injury, no one expects you to come back from that overnight.”

Mike shakes his head. “You don’t— You don’t hear the way everyone talks to me, Rachel and Donna, and Louis, and _you,_ you all say what you’re supposed to, you all tell me you get it, these things take time, but did you ever think about how _I_ might be feeling?”

“That’s all any of us are thinking about!” Harvey insists, and Mike laughs sharply.

“Bullshit, that’s bullshit.”

“No it isn’t,” Harvey says as a weight suddenly begins to stack onto his shoulders, his back, his chest, from where, it doesn’t matter, it’s been building up over their heads, over his head, for a long time.

“Yes it is!” Mike smacks his hand down on his chest, his eyes widening incredulously. “You don’t think I _want_ to be that guy again? You don’t think I wish everything was the way it was before, you don’t think I want to remember how to be me? You don’t think I want to remember how to be _happy?_ How to feel _anything?_ ”

Lost. Harvey remembers how to feel lost. Harvey remembers how to feel hurt, and terrified, and delirious, and guilty. Harvey remembers hopelessness, uselessness, the pointlessness of everything.

Harvey remembers fear.

“Mike,” he says coldly, because he has to be reasonable, he’s gotta stay in control. “I know it seems like nothing’s happening right now. I know it feels like you aren’t making any progress.”

Mike laughs again, and Harvey grits his teeth.

“But you are,” he presses on. “You’re healing. Even if you can’t see it. You’re going to get better, and we’re all going to help you. I’m going to help you. But you need to give these things a little time.”

Slowly, incredulously, Mike shakes his head.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” he says. “Did you all have some meeting while I was in the hospital where you decided that was gonna be your official team cheer? ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter that Mike’s basically dead inside, because things’ll get better _eventually._ So let’s all just hold onto that for awhile and hope it doesn’t get any _worse._ ’”

_Worse?_

“You _did_ die!” Harvey thunders as the last tether snaps, his vision colored red, because if Mike wants to have it out, fine, they’re going to have it out. “For three minutes, in the OR, you were legally dead, and then for two weeks after that I watched, and I waited, and there was nothing I could do but hope, and pray, and every time I closed my eyes I saw it over, and over, I watched you getting hit by that goddamn car, again and again and again and I couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it, and all I could do was wait to find out if you were ever going to wake up!”

“This isn’t about _you!_ ”

“You think I don’t know that?” Harvey shouts, crowding in on Mike, towering over him. “So what do you want, you want me to stop talking to you? Stop trying to help? You want me to leave you alone until you figure out how to get better all by yourself?”

“I want you to understand that I’m miserable!” Mike shouts back, standing tall, refusing to be cowed. “I want you to understand that I can only be happy for a few seconds at a time before it all goes away, and sometimes I wish I’d never been born, and I just want everyone to stop trying to _fix_ me! Because it’s not gonna happen!”

The words dry up on Harvey’s tongue, they burn to ash in the fire of Mike’s furious eyes, and what’s he supposed to do now, huh? How’s he supposed to make this better?

Mike doesn’t give him a chance to figure it out as he shakes his head again and scoffs through his parted lips, turning to storm into his room and slam the door behind him.

Harvey drops his shoulders weakly as the sound reverberates in his ears.

Everything is progress.


	7. Chapter 7

Once it’s gotten to be very dark outside, late enough to push the boundaries of reason and good sense, Mike stops squinting at the book in his hands, which is four hundred pages long and has a title he didn’t think to check when he pulled it off the shelf. Shoving it onto the bedside table, he stands up from the floor and stalks to the closet, yanking off his black suit jacket and his shiny navy blue shirt and squirming his way into a thin grey t-shirt faded with wear; kicking his shoes off and shoving his pants down, he reaches out for the pair of rolled-up socks that fell on the floor yesterday and pulls them onto his feet for no particular reason except that it seems like a decent thing to do.

His heart pounding in his chest, he drags the blankets down and climbs into bed, and his only real thought is that trying to fall asleep in such a condition will be difficult at best, and even if he succeeds, he might have a heart attack in the middle of the night, which seems like the sort of thing that would kill him before it woke him, and that would just be unfortunate.

Harvey was wrong to say what he said. Harvey was wrong to make this all about himself. He was wrong to make this about anyone but Mike, he was wrong to try to pressure Mike into understanding what he’s gone through, wrong to try to make this an exercise in empathy, because Harvey might be hurting for him, Rachel and Donna and Louis and all of them might feel it in their hearts that he’s in pain, and they might want everything to be all better, but they’ll forget. All of them, they’ll get over it sooner or later, after the worst of the symptoms have gone away, when they can’t see the scars anymore and they start to move on with their lives the same as they were before while he has to keep existing by himself with this hole inside of him, going on and on and on into the future and always wondering what life might’ve been like if only this and that.

Mike pulls the blankets up over his shoulders and tucks them under his chin and wipes a trace of saliva from the corner of his mouth.

Harvey is hurting, too. Harvey’s been hurting for a long time, and this has been very hard on all of them.

Running his thumbnail against his lower lip, Mike catches a bit of chapped skin and pulls, tearing it off and tasting the sting of blood underneath. He wonders how thick the bedroom door is, if Harvey would hear if he started crying into his pillow and whether he might know well enough not to come in.

This has been very hard on all of them.

When Mike closes his eyes, the dark shapes coloring his vision look like shadowy trees blowing in the wind at about sixteen frames per second, and it doesn’t feel as disconcerting as it probably should; what he really needs right now is a distraction, but it isn’t quite that, either.

This has been very hard on all of them.

He feels the warning hitch in his breath, the heat behind his eyes before he starts sobbing, but the tears stop falling before he feels like he’s quite finished, and no matter how hard he tries or how much he forces himself the sorrow to overwhelm him, they won’t start up again. On the other hand, though, his heart rate feels like it’s slowed to a pretty normal speed, so he probably isn’t running the risk of dying of cardiac arrest in the next few hours. It’s very dark outside, and it’s probably late; it wouldn’t be so strange for him to go to sleep right about now.

For a second, he wonders how long they would have mourned for him if he had died in the crash instead of just surviving with his traumatic injury. In the long run, it might have been easier, in general. Then in the next second, finally beginning to drift off, he feels sick to his stomach, and hates himself for having such a stupid thought.

Mike picks at the dead skin on his lower lip and hopes the blood doesn’t stain the pillowcases.

\---

Harvey wakes to the soft darkness that comes between midnight and dawn in the winter months, one of those forgiving sorts of hours when staying in bed and going back to sleep is as much an option as getting up for an early start to the day. Maybe even the better choice. He could do it, too, stay right where he is for a few more hours, burrowed deep in his nest, his refuge from real life where everything is warm and gentle and nothing hurts.

Nice try.

Dragging his arms out from under the covers, Harvey presses the heels of his palms to his eyes and sighs. What did he expect out of the deposition? Really, what did he think was going to happen? Did he think Moredock was going to submit to their demands? That Wentworth would be fired for costing the city millions of dollars over one stupid mistake as Mike skipped off into the sunset with his haul and they all settled in for their happily ever afters? Yeah, maybe in the movies, maybe on the Hallmark channel, but Harvey’s been around the block enough times to know better. He _knew_ better than to get his hopes up, to think everything would go smoothly, that there wouldn’t be any surprise twists.

Talk about soap operas.

He should’ve done more. He should’ve seen this coming. He should’ve prepared Mike better, he should’ve asked questions he _knew_ Mike wouldn’t be able to answer. He should’ve given him that experience in advance so it wouldn’t catch him by surprise, so it wouldn’t throw him off his game.

Harvey groans, pulling the sound up from deep in his chest. How, exactly, was he supposed to know? Mike might’ve accused Harvey of blindsiding him with the ten million as an excuse to flip his shit, but wherever his anger came from, it wasn’t there. Hell, _Mike_ might not even know what he’s really mad about. Who he’s really mad at. Wentworth, for hitting him in the first place? Probably, underneath it all. Moredock, for asking the question that tripped him up? Maybe, at least a little. Harvey, for letting things get this far? A little, a lot, who knows.

Himself? For everything?

Oh, Mike.

Groaning again, Harvey tosses his arms to the right and rolls onto his stomach, pressing his face into the cotton sheets. Has he really gone all this time taking Mike’s word for it that he’s doing fine? That he’s getting by? That just being out of the hospital, just being home with Harvey is enough to make everything all better? To make _him_ all better? Well, that’s arrogance for you; after all this time, Harvey should’ve known it would get the better of him eventually.

He did, honestly.

But how was he supposed to know it would be like this?

\---

The kitchen is cold and off-center in a way it hasn’t been before, a way Harvey’s never noticed in all the years he’s lived in this apartment. He clasps his hands around his steaming coffee mug, trying to warm them as though the apartment isn’t centrally heated to the perfect temperature; he should drink the coffee before it cools, before it becomes tepid and sour, but it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to move his hands. He’ll regret it later, of course, not taking the caffeine while he’s got the chance, sloughing off the cobwebs of that restless night. Sleep snatched in instants, moments that hardly count for anything.

Moments. Mike lives his whole life in moments. Little fragments of time adrift in a sea of static arcing toward a haze on the horizon that doesn’t leave any room for hope; moments unmoored from the past, the future stuck behind a gauzy curtain that only lets the vilest caricatures slip through every now and again, visions of every way things might go wrong, pulling Mike further down into the pit of his darkest hours.

And Harvey thought he could help. Harvey thought _he_ was enough, Harvey thought he was _good_ enough.

Pride goeth before the fall and all that.

Harvey slides his hands over the surface of his steaming coffee mug and feels a tiny chip under his left middle finger, a small marker of the passing of days. Before he can raise the mug to his lips, or decide not to, Mike’s bedroom door clicks open and he emerges, yawning up at the ceiling. Scrubbing his hand through his hair, Mike shuffles forward; his left sock, thick and white, has less traction than his right, black with green needlepoint leaves, making his stride a little uneven and filling Harvey with a foolish sort of sadness.

“Morning,” Mike mumbles, grabbing a piece of whole wheat bread from the loaf on the counter and dropping it into the toaster oven. “You got any jelly?”

It doesn’t matter that Mike’s basically dead inside.

Harvey smiles tightly.

“There’s some blueberry on the door.”

Mike grins as he retrieves the jelly, grabbing a plate out of the cabinet and setting it by the toaster as he waits for his bread to finish.

Harvey raises his mug to his lips and drinks.

\---

The clock at the corner of his laptop screen says the time is eleven thirteen, but the little display on the landline declares it to be only eleven twelve, and Harvey has to wait with his pen pressed to the notepad in front of him until the two times align, the world in general slotting into place before he can get back to work. He isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, exactly; something about an electronics manufacturer trying to back out of a deal with one of their distributors, although Harvey doesn’t remember which party he’s representing. Maybe he’ll just write up both sides of the argument and sort it out later.

He’ll have to use a new notepad, though; this one’s got an ink spot in the middle of the page that bleeds all the way through to the next sheet.

“Harvey.”

Louis is doing that thing again where he knocks and calls for Harvey’s attention at the same time, taking up as much space as he can just in case Harvey was too wrapped up in himself to notice. Looking up, Harvey finds his mind wandering to that time in Little League, before he really knew how to handle a glove, when he caught a grounder on the first bounce so that it smashed right into his chin; this feels sort of similar in a way that can’t be put into words.

“Louis,” he says. “This about Sutter?”

“Of course it is,” Louis says, the rushed pace of his words a disorienting mismatch to his predatory steps across Harvey’s office floor. “You asked for my help and I’m giving it to you.”

Harvey purses his lips and drops his pen. “What’ve you got?”

“There’s definitely something shady going on in House Sutter,” Louis confides, resting his fingertips on Harvey’s desk. Harvey looks up at him wearily, and Louis furrows his brow.

“ _Game of Thrones_ , Harvey, engage in the culture.”

“Yeah,” Harvey dismisses, “fine, so did you find something or not?”

As he stabs his index finger down on the desk, Louis’s grin turns downright conniving. “His son in law,” he murmurs. “Kevin Miller is at Danbury Federal right now for his involvement in Sutter’s scheme, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s taking the fall for someone higher up the food chain.”

Harvey waits a moment.

“That’s it?”

Louis draws back a step. “Harvey, Sutter’s been covering his tracks for years, this is gonna take some time to unravel.”

“So what you’re telling me is you’ve got nothing.”

“What I’m telling you is that I have a _lead,_ ” Louis says, “and I know it might not be everything you were hoping for, but it’s a _start._ ”

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Where has he heard that one before?

Harvey sighs and presses his forehead into his hands. “I know,” he says into his chest. “I know. Thank you, Louis, you’re…” He looks up with a watery smile. “You’re doing good work.”

Louis withdraws his hands and drops his gaze to the floor.

Harvey waits a moment.

“Harvey, how’s Mike?”

Yes, that’s right; everybody cares about Mike.

He’s miserable, Harvey ought to say. He’s got a coldness inside him that I don’t know how to thaw, a darkness that I can’t seem to chase away, no matter how hard I try. He’s trying to make peace with his demons and they’re fighting like hell to get the best of him and I’m afraid the battle is killing him, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.

“He’s getting better.”

Louis smiles.

“Good.”

Yes.

It’s a start.

\---

Sitting on the living room sofa, Mike looks down at the coffee table, covered with maybe half a dozen completed crossword puzzles. A few hundred questions answered, only a quarter of which he had to look up on the Internet. Maybe a third.

Not a bad day’s work, as these things go.

According to the clock underneath the television, it’s five forty-five; Harvey will be home soon, probably. Maybe. For now, Mike gets up and goes to his room to put on a big sweater; it’s warm and very soft, the sort of thing a person wears to take an afternoon nap.

Harvey will be home soon.

Bending down to reach the bottom shelf of the bookcase along the wall, Mike picks up the little stuffed dog and goes back to the living room to sit on the sofa and stare at the coffee table, covered with maybe half a dozen completed crossword puzzles that he finished all by himself, mostly. The air smells like lemons and the cloudy sky right before a heavy rain, and he hears a sound like a finely-tipped pen scratching across a sheet of paper coming from somewhere in the walls.

Reaching out to the coffee table, he picks up one of puzzles and looks at the list of questions and wonders what sort of person goes to bed each night imagining that their life will end up this way, someday. Then he picks up his pen and writes at the end of the list: “We’re all someone else to someone else.”

So there’s some truth to that.

\---

“Mike?” Harvey closes the door behind himself and keeps his eyes on the floor as he takes off his coat. “You hungry? I got some takeout.”

“Hey,” Mike calls, his voice dulled by the walls in such a way that Harvey knows he’s in the living room. “Yeah, what kind?”

Hanging his coat in the closet, Harvey lifts the bag off the floor and brings it to the kitchen to set it down on the counter. “Greek.”

Mike hoists himself off the sofa and walks over with a quirky little grin on his face, and Harvey smiles back the way he would to a major client at a fundraising event.

Nothing to see here.

“You get those grape leaf things with the rice?” Mike asks as Harvey hands him a plate.

“Dolmas,” Harvey says. “Yeah.”

Mike begins pulling plastic containers out of the bag, and Harvey opens the silverware drawer.

Everything is perfectly normal.

“So how was your day?”

Mike shrugs.

“Fine.”

Bullshit.

Harvey drops his spoon into the fassolatha, splashing a little down the sides of the bowl. “Mike, we’ve gotta talk.”

His mouth tightening at the corners, Mike walks to the freezer and pulls out a tray of ice cubes. “About what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me.”

The ice cube tray makes a cracking sound as Mike twists it down the middle.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” Harvey snaps, “I just— I just want to _talk._ ”

Narrowing his eyes, Mike picks up his plate and carries it to the dining table by the window, and Harvey looks away. Maybe he deserved that.

But it’s been such a long day.

“Mike,” he starts again. “I know you think I don’t get it. And—and maybe I don’t. I probably don’t. But if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, if you don’t tell me how I can help, I’m never _going_ to understand what you’re going through, and I can’t…”

Biting his lip, Harvey sighs.

“You don’t have to go through this alone.”

Mike sniffs around a bite of moussaka. “Yeah, I do.”

“Not all of it,” Harvey argues as he stalks to the dining table, realizing too late that he’s left his food on the kitchen counter, but there’s no sense in worrying about that now. “Mike, I’m trying to help you, but I can only do so much when you don’t tell me what you need.”

Mike shrugs.

“If I knew, I’d tell you.”

Doing his best not to collapse under his sudden weariness, Harvey drops into the chair beside Mike’s, leaning down over his arms and reminding himself again and again that no one ever said this was going to be easy.

“Mike,” he tries his best not to beg, “you gotta give me something.”

His eyes glazing over, Mike nods slowly, rhythmically, looking down in the general direction of his fork as though it might be able to give him some kind of hint, but when he blinks his eyes clear and looks up again, it doesn’t seem that he’s gotten the answers he was looking for.

“I’ll think about it.”

That’s the way it goes, then; at least it’s better than nothing. Harvey tries to smile, and it feels like he’s succeeded about as well as can be expected for the time being.

“Thank you.”

And that’s enough?

Of course; every little bit helps, after all.

It does, doesn’t it?

Who can say?

Harvey claps his hands down on his knees and goes back to the kitchen to eat his soup.

Let’s keep going anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fassolatha: White bean soup  
> Moussaka: Eggplant, potato, and ground meat casserole
> 
> For a variety of reasons, this story has become very difficult for me to keep writing, and I want to take this opportunity to thank my friends who have been so kind in listening to my struggles and so encouraging in pushing me to continue. Whether you like this story or not, whether you're reading it or not, I just hope you know how much it means to me that you're all so supportive. Thank you for everything.


	8. Chapter 8

In the morning, Harvey wakes in a gradual sort of way that tells him he got a pretty good night’s sleep last night, and it only takes about a minute, maybe two, for him to be overcome with exhaustion. Maybe this is a sign from the universe, maybe he should stay in bed all day so that he doesn’t have to look at anything too colorful and it’ll be easier to pretend that everything’s fine just the way it is.

On the other hand, he’s almost out of milk.

At eight thirty-seven, Harvey’s stomach clenches in an upsetting sort of way, but he can’t tell whether it’s from hunger or nausea; instead of thinking too hard about something so small, he gets up and goes to the closet and pulls on a pair of blue jeans to go to the corner store, where he’s sure to find any number of items he didn’t know he needed until they’re right in front of him.

Mike’s bedroom door is closed, but it doesn’t quite register in Harvey’s mind until he’s outside, right around the same time that he passes the veterinary hospital.

As Harvey continues on down the street, he finds himself slipping into an awareness of himself as a person existing in the world, an encapsulated entity moving through time and space, the only truly living being among an endless supply of bodies placed there mainly to provide the notion of realism but each lacking in anything resembling a sense of self. A man he only sort of recognizes rounds the far corner and starts walking toward him, and Harvey crosses the street just in case the guy was planning to say, “Nice weather we’re having today,” or maybe just “Hi.”

The corner store is out of avocados.

Harvey stands in front of the empty shelf for awhile before he leaves the produce section to fill his basket with a gallon of milk, a bag of steel-cut oats, and a glass bottle of ketchup, and when he gets to the register he grabs a pack of peppermint Trident that he doesn’t want very much. The checkout girl says “Happy Saturday!” with a big smile on her fact like she really means it, and Harvey says “You too,” even though he really doesn’t.

Back at home, Mike’s bedroom door is still closed, and as he puts the groceries away, Harvey considers throwing the peppermint Trident out the window in case some pedestrian down on the street is having a craving. Instead he fixes himself a turkey sandwich with tomatoes and mustard, realizing about halfway through that his stomach doesn’t hurt anymore; by the time he’s finished, he’s forgotten all about it.

In the living room, Harvey sits on the sofa, turning the television on to some football game he doesn’t care about in the slightest and arranging the crossword puzzles on the coffee table into a stack so he can put his feet up without stepping on them. The announcers of the game go off on some tangent about one of the players’ home life, and Harvey changes the channel to the news, even though the popularization of the twenty-four hour news cycle has overloaded the American public with information to the point of apathy and rendered them incapable of discerning important stories from trivial ones.

That’s what his dentist says, anyway. Harvey figures she’s got a point, so it’s probably a good thing he’s not paying attention.

At about twelve thirty, Mike comes out of his room looking like he’s already been up for hours, smiling at Harvey as he picks up the stack of crossword puzzles and brings them back to the kitchen to throw them in the garbage.

“Morning,” Harvey says as Mike opens the refrigerator. “What’ve you been up to?”

Mike emerges from the refrigerator empty-handed and grabs a banana off the counter instead. “Reading,” he says as he begins to peel it. “I slept in kind of late. Little before eight.”

Harvey hums. “Late night?”

“Yeah, I didn’t get to bed until about one.”

“Busy?”

Mike shrugs and takes a bite of his banana. “I wasn’t tired.”

“Mm.”

Harvey mutes the television and keeps his eyes on the moving picture, even though it’s not much more than a bunch of people sitting around a table listening sincerely to someone with his back to the camera talking about voter suppression, according to the chyron at the bottom of the screen.

“What’re you reading?”

Mike throws his banana peel away in the garbage can that has all his crossword puzzles in it and comes to sit in one of the living room chairs. “ _Three Musketeers_.”

Harvey leans against the armrest. “I don’t think I’ve ever read that one.”

“It’s interesting.” Mike presses his left foot down on the floor and turns his chair a little to the right. “I’m almost finished, if you wanna read it when I’m done.”

Nodding, Harvey tries to remember the last time he read a book just for the fun of it. It’s been a few years, at least.

“I might take you up on that.”

Mike purses his lips as he bends over and presses his hands to the heels of his sneakers.

“Does the gym have a treadmill?”

Harvey frowns. “The one downstairs?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, a few.”

Mike nods to himself, untying and retying his shoelaces.

“I’m gonna go downstairs for awhile.”

Harvey does his best to keep his eyes on the television, which is airing a cheerful-looking commercial for Lyrica in between breaking news stories about things that probably happened days ago.

“Bring a water bottle,” he says. “Stop if you feel lightheaded.”

“Yeah.”

Harvey watches a silent commercial for Ambien and listens to the refrigerator open and close, Mike’s squeaking footsteps down the hall to the front door, which opens with a click and closes on a loud noise that’s not quite a slam.

Mike must still be thinking about it.

When the commercial break ends, Harvey picks the remote up with every intention of turning the sound back on, but instead he decides to turn the whole set off, pushing himself up from the sofa to retrieve the newspaper from where he left it on the floor by the front door when he went out this morning to buy milk at the corner store. Thumbing through the pages, he pulls out the Arts section and turns to the crossword puzzle, only then realizing that he doesn’t have anything to write with.

Remembering of the crossword puzzles strewn across the coffee table, Harvey tosses the Arts section down for Mike to tend to later. Then he remembers that the pile of crossword puzzles is in the garbage can, under the banana peel, and gets up to look for a pen.

\---

At eight twenty-eight, Harvey wakes from a nap he hadn’t planned on taking and digs his fingernails into the sofa cushions as he realizes that he’s not actually at the seaside, imagining that he must have been dreaming that he was. Raising himself up on his forearms, he looks over the back of the sofa to Mike’s bedroom door, which is still open, the lights inside still turned off. Mike must not be back from the gym yet.

Harvey lies back down on the sofa, pressing his face into an accent pillow for a long time until his stomach clenches in hunger and he’s overcome by a conveniently specific craving for pan fried noodles. Mike has the misfortune of returning home just as he’s getting off the phone, though he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it, heading straight for the refrigerator to pull out the leftovers of last night’s Greek dinner and sitting down with them at the kitchen island.

Setting his loose fists down on the island beside the sink, Harvey settles his weight on his shoulderblades and smiles.

“Good workout?”

“Mm.” Mike gives a thumbs up and swallows a bite of cold moussaka. “Yeah. I did the treadmill for an hour, and then the stationary bike.” Lowering his gaze, he picks at his damp t-shirt. “I’m gonna shower after this.”

“Good,” Harvey says, “I’m glad you had a good time.”

Mike grins at him and turns his attention back to his food. Ten minutes later, he’s finished the last of the dolmas and stashed his dishes in the dishwasher, retreating to his bedroom, turning the lights on, and closing the door behind him.

Fifteen minutes later, the buzzer rings to announce the arrival of Harvey’s delivery. Harvey tips the delivery guy a fifty and fixes himself a tidy plate to eat at the dining room table, illuminated on either side by the focused lights under the range hood in the kitchen and the spotty glow of the city beneath the balcony outside.

This is fine for now.

\---

Lying in the dark with his eyes wide open, Harvey watches dust move through the air above his face, and shadows skid across the ceiling, resetting with every passing car and changing traffic light. That nap was a terrible idea, although he thinks he deserves some credit for not having done it on purpose. This isn’t his fault, lying awake in the dark when he’d much rather be sleeping; biology did this to him, this is nature’s infliction.

A motorcycle revs its engine and squeals off down the road, and it doesn’t mean a single thing, but Harvey feels like he ought to be able to make something of it. His brain is probably just desperately grasping for something to fixate on, something to hold, a reason to be awake at this ridiculous hour beyond a terrible decision that really wasn’t his fault at all.

Harvey turns on his side and puts a pillow over his head, and everything sounds like it’s underwater.

“Harvey?”

Sometimes there are voices in the water.

Mike steps forward carefully, accidentally making more noise than he would have done if he’d just walked normally, and Harvey sets his pillow down beside his head.

“Everything okay?” he asks, sitting up against the headboard.

Mike stands at the foot of his bed with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes on the wall.

“Do you think I’m ever going to get better?”

Yes, I do. Yes, of course I do. Yes, you will because you have to, because otherwise what’s been the point of any of this?

Harvey sighs.

“I don’t know.”

Mike unfolds his arms and sits on the foot of the bed, looking down at the covers.

“I feel like I’m broken, you know?”

No. No, not really. I’d like to, but I don’t.

“What do you mean?”

Mike pulls his leg up underneath him and presses his lips together, like he needs to say something but he can’t remember exactly how.

“You know how I’m reading all these books?”

Harvey nods, and Mike purses his lips in a scowl.

“They’re all talking about these big moments, like—everyone’s in awe of the beauty of nature, and surprised to see these people they haven’t seen in years, and desperately in love with each other. People in stories are always desperately in love, have you noticed that?” Mike complains suddenly, having sat on this discovery for some time without any opportunity to share it. “It’s always so…big, and dramatic. Like you’re not allowed to just love someone, it has to be everything you are, all the time. And if it’s not—loud enough, it doesn’t count.”

Harvey sits up straighter, and his head knocks against the headboard.

Mike grabs a handful of blanket and drags it back and forth.

“I don’t remember what it feels like,” he says stiffly. “I don’t remember what it feels like to be in love. I don’t remember how happy I was when you gave me my job, or I won my first case, or the first time Rachel told me she loved me.” He smiles like this is all one big joke he’s only pretending to be in on, and drags the blankets back and forth.

“I’m just guessing,” he says. “I’m guessing I loved her, I’m guessing I was happy. But I mean, for all I know I’m just making it up to make myself feel better, and so everyone’ll think I’m getting back to normal.”

“You’re not,” Harvey promises. “You did love her. You were happy.”

Mike laughs like he can’t help it, and maybe Harvey shouldn’t have said anything.

“I can feel some things.” He turns his gaze to the floor, breathing in and out, scratching his cheek. “I remember how I felt when my grandmother died; I remember feeling like I hadn’t done enough, like I had failed her, and I remember feeling like nothing was ever going to be okay again, like nothing would ever get rid of the hole in my heart. I remember being so ashamed of myself for all the times I let her down, I remember crying so much that I was sure I was never going to stop.”

Harvey presses his lips together tight and forces himself not to say anything.

“I remember how I felt when I found out Rachel had cheated on me.” Mike sniffles like he’s trying not to cry, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. “I remember being furious, I remember feeling betrayed; I remember feeling like _I_ had failed, somehow, like it was _my_ fault it had happened, that she had…done that to me.”

Harvey tries not to say anything, but Mike doesn’t speak for awhile, and the silence starts to feel like it’s waiting on him.

“So…that’s something,” he murmurs. “You’re getting better.”

Mike coughs like he’s trying not to cry.

“I know how to hurt,” he says. “I know how to be angry, I know how to be sad. I know how to _pretend_ to be happy, but what’s the point of that? What the hell kind of life am I supposed to be living?”

Harvey pushes the blankets down and sets his feet on the floor, sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“You’re doing the best you can right now,” he says. “It’s a start. And I know it might not seem like it right now, but it’s a good start. Maybe it’s not the start you want, but it’s a lot better than you were a couple months ago.”

“I don’t know if I even care about anyone anymore,” Mike bursts out, and Harvey doesn’t think he heard him, which is probably just as well. “Rachel and I were _engaged,_ we were going to get _married,_ and now I— I don’t think I’d care if I never saw her again for the rest of my life. And I remember Jessica, and Donna, and Louis, they’re my _family,_ they’ve done _everything_ for me, and I _know_ they care about _me,_ and what happens to me, and I, I think about them, I can see their faces in my mind, and I don’t feel—happy, I don’t…”

Harvey places his hands at his sides and does his best not to make this about himself.

Mike pulls his knee up in front of him and sets his hands down on his thigh.

“There are all these people around me, but I always feel like I’m alone.”

A car with its brights on drives down the street, shifting the shadows across the ceiling, and Harvey realizes how dumb it is that he’s probably been waiting his entire life for someone to understand what it is to live this way, the stupid irony of two people coming together to commiserate over their shared isolation at just the right moment to be unable to do a damn thing about it.

“I know it hurts,” he says softly, turning his face toward Mike, just so. “I know it’s hard. But you’re gonna keep fighting, because that’s who you are, and we’ll all be right here to help you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Mike sniffles again like he’s stopped trying not to cry. Harvey clenches his fist in the blankets and tries to feel his nails dig into his palm.

“Haven’t I done enough?”

Harvey closes his eyes tight.

Yes. Yes, of course you have. You’ve done more than enough. This thing keeps kicking you in the teeth and you keep getting up and facing it down day after day, fighting like hell, doing the best that you can, and it’s enough. It is.

“You want to quit?”

Mike sits in silence for a few second before he squirms around in his seat, fidgeting clumsily until he’s moved to the side of the bed to sit beside Harvey, only a couple of feet of empty space left in between them.

“No.”

Harvey looks at him and picks out the lines of his face in the shadows.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

Harvey takes a breath.

“Do you really wish you’d never been born?”

Mike stops moving for awhile, staring off at that other dimension his mind goes to sometimes when he needs to think, when he needs to be somewhere else for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes.”

There are a hundred different things Harvey could say right now, and none of them would do either of them any good.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

Harvey lets go of the blankets and sets his hands on his knees.

“You want me to call Shay?”

Mike shrugs, twisting his fingers together.

“Okay.”

And Harvey doesn’t exactly mean to do it, but before he thinks about it too hard, before he can talk himself into or out of it, he reaches out to slide his hand across Mike’s shoulder in a gentle sort of way, and Mike leans into his chest without really any prompting, and he lets himself be cradled there as Harvey holds him tight. Mike tucks his head into the space underneath Harvey’s chin, right against his clavicle, and Harvey clenches his fist in Mike’s nightshirt as though it’ll bring him in any closer than he already is.

Five minutes later, Mike gets up to shuffle back to his room, and Harvey lies down in the dark and closes his eyes, wondering what he’s going to dream about and whether he’ll still remember it in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Look, all this is to say that I lived in a house surrounded by family, but I know what it’s like to be totally alone.”  
> —Harvey, “High Noon” (s02e10)
> 
> Dumas, A. (2004). _Three Musketeers_. New York City, NY: Barnes & Noble.


	9. Chapter 9

Sunday morning dawns auspiciously clear, and for one evanescent moment, Harvey tries to appreciate the fact that he doesn’t have anything planned for the day before his mind begins to slowly and methodically poison itself with the conviction that he’s wasting valuable time by not having anything planned for the day. Of course, eight-ten-twelve hours later, when he crawls back into bed under the cover of night and can’t remember anything he did or didn’t get done, his regret is indiscriminately washed away alongside any sense of accomplishment he might have built up, and it’s back to work tomorrow, no harm done.

Monday morning, Mike sits at the kitchen island in his undershirt and sweatpants, stirring his cereal like he’s working up the nerve to say something important, and Harvey drinks his coffee as slowly as he can while he waits to hear it. Whatever it is that Mike wants, Harvey will give it to him; he wouldn’t ask for anything outlandish, would he? No, there’s nothing he could say that would be too much, nothing he could ask that would be a step too far.

“Hey Harvey,” Mike says as Harvey bends down to open the dishwasher.

“Yeah,” Harvey says as he stands to rinse his hands under the faucet.

“Can I go to work with you today?”

Nothing in the world.

Harvey clears his throat.

“You sure?” he stalls, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and thinking about changing his necktie for no particular reason.

Mike nods, the act of broaching the subject having apparently washed away the rest of his hesitations. “I mean thanks for giving me those old case files, but if the whole point is for me to get back to work eventually, I have to start somewhere,” he reasons. “Better now than when you’re completely swamped.”

There is that side of it.

But then there’s the part, Harvey thinks as he tugs absently at his tie, where Mike’s vertigo is caused by damage to his inner ear and it’s probably never going to completely go away. There’s the part, Harvey thinks as he loosens the knot around his neck, where Mike’s forgotten most of his life before the accident and there’s no telling how much of it he’ll get back, or when, if ever. There’s the part, Harvey thinks as he pulls his tie out from under his collar and picks at the bar tack, where Mike had to take anti-convulsants for a week after his discharge because he was at high enough risk for a seizure that the doctors needed to take precautions, even though they let him leave the hospital, even though they let him go home with Harvey, who doesn’t know the first thing about medicine, who wouldn’t be able to do anything more useful in the event of a medical emergency than call 911 and hope for the best.

“I was thinking about it a lot yesterday,” Mike offers.

He was thinking about it. He was thinking about it a lot, probably all day long, and Harvey had no idea. He didn’t say a word, and Harvey didn’t have a clue.

“Are you okay?” Mike asks, nudging his spoon in the general direction of Harvey’s fidgeting hands.

Harvey shoves the tie into his pocket.

“Yeah,” he says. “If you’re sure, I think it’s a great idea. You just let me know if it’s too much for you, Ray can take you back here. He can take you wherever.”

Mike smiles for a second. Harvey appreciates the effort.

\---

It isn’t exactly familiarity Mike feels when he steps through the front doors of the steel-and-mortar monolith at the corner of Fifty-third and Lexington, the building where Harvey tells him Pearson Specter Litt takes up the entire fiftieth floor plus some storage or research or something a few floors below. It isn’t exactly familiarity he feels, and it isn’t quite recognition. It isn’t the revelation he figures he’s supposed to have, it isn’t a flash of insight, a shutter speed slide show of his forgotten days, but he can’t exactly say that any of it is a surprise.

That’s it, Mike thinks as they walk past security toward the elevators. It’s that this is all so terribly, indifferently unsurprising. He’s been to this building before, so many times, and he couldn’t describe it offhand in much detail, but they ride the elevator up to the fiftieth floor and he steps into the hall and this is exactly what he would have expected, if he’d thought about it beforehand. This is exactly how this place should look, and sound, and smell. They got it all, down to the last detail.

Harvey clears his throat and walks to the left, and Mike follows as though he knew it all along.

“You remember this?” Harvey asks.

Mike makes a little show of taking it all in, twisting his neck to look over his shoulder and up at the ceiling.

“Kind of.”

Harvey nods, and maybe that’s enough for now.

In front of Harvey’s office is a desk, a little cubicle where Donna sits in her stylish dress with her elegant hair spilling over her shoulders and her long fingers placed carefully on her computer keyboard, and a composed expression on her pretty face that doesn’t change a bit as they approach.

“Harvey, you got a call from Nathan Burns about twenty minutes ago, he says it’s urgent.”

Mike thinks about waving, or saying hi, and does neither.

“He says that about everything,” Harvey scoffs. “If he hasn’t called back yet and it’s still important three hours from now, then we’ll have something to talk about.”

Donna smiles her commiseration, idling as she waits for cues, and Harvey turns toward his office.

“Hey Donna,” Mike says.

“Mike,” she replies instantly, looking over as her smile turns warm and kind and sympathetic. Mike smiles back and pretends not to notice her raised eyebrows and her tense shoulders as he follows Harvey, and today is just another day, and everything is going to be fine.

Harvey tips his head down into his chest and turns on his laptop.

“Some trading firm just moved in downstairs,” he says, running his finger along the trackpad, “and Jessica wants us to make nice with them, she thinks it’d be good for us to have that kind of resource in our stable.”

Mike hums under his breath; Harvey doesn’t seem to hear.

“What can I do?”

Reaching into one of his desk drawers, Harvey shuffles ambivalently through the papers there before pulling one out as though he had to hunt it down, even though Mike bets he knew exactly where it was before he even started searching.

“I want to know what I’m getting into before I start courting these guys,” Harvey says. “This is an anonymized survey of the kinds of trades Nathan Burns wants us to make, and the direction he wants to take his company; I want you to show it to them and see what they think.” Holding the paper out, he gets a funny sort of look on his face as Mike looks down at it impassively.

“You can ask Rachel to help you, if you want.”

Mike takes the paper with an unsteady nod, setting his free hand on his hip in such a way that his index finger is pressed right up against the jut of his pelvic bone, and Harvey smiles encouragingly as his arms drop lifelessly to his sides.

Mike glances down at the paper, and Harvey clears his throat.

“Rachel’s office is down the hall to the left.”

Mike presses his lips together and nods again, waiting one more second for Harvey to sneak in one last word; instead his smile tautens, his eyes darting down, and Mike doesn’t know quite exactly what to make of it but he knows that if they’re going to make this work, if this gambit of theirs is going to pay off, he needs to learn quickly to play by all the rules he’s forgotten, to fit himself back into this world where he does and doesn’t belong.

“On it,” he says, raising the paper and tipping his hand in a lighthearted salute. Harvey waits for him to leave before he sits, and Mike walks past Donna’s desk without checking to see if she’s watching him or not.

The office next to Harvey’s is empty. Mike walks past it with a purposeful stride and hopes he isn’t making a mistake.

No, no; Rachel’s office is the next one; he knows because she’s sitting at her desk with her eyes fixed on her monitor, leaning over her folded arms and furrowing her brow every couple of seconds. Mike waits a moment, just off to the side, until she sighs loudly and rakes her hand back through her hair.

“Hey,” he cuts in, opening the door and pausing to hold up the survey. “Harvey said you could help me with this?”

She turns to him with her eyes open too wide and a too-small sort of grin on her lips, her hands twitching as if to reach for whatever he’s trying to hand her even before she knows what it is, before she knows whether this is something she should or shouldn’t involve herself with.

“Mike,” she breathes, collecting her wits about her just enough to stand and welcome him in. “Wow, I, I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon, how are you doing?”

Stepping forward, he shuts the door behind him, and she’s right, she’s right; she shouldn’t have expected him, but this is just a trial run, an experiment to help him figure out How Much Longer. She’s right to be surprised, she’s right to be suspicious.

“I’m doing better,” he says, because time has passed so that must be the truth. That’s what everyone says, yeah, things get better with time. “Harvey said there are some new traders downstairs, and he wants me to show this to them and see what they think.”

Rachel presses her arms against her sides and smiles in a way that shows her teeth.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” she says sweetly, and Mike’s face goes blank for a moment until he realizes that she isn’t talking about the survey.

“Thanks,” he says. “So… Harvey wants to show this to the traders.”

Reaching out for the sheet in Mike’s hand, she begins to read it and stops almost instantly, chewing on her lower lip.

“Mike,” she falters, “this is just…generic information, there’s nothing identifying in here. The traders aren’t going to be able to give Harvey any advice about anything.”

He frowns. “Yeah,” he says. “I know. Harvey doesn’t need advice, he just wants to see how these traders think about this kind of stuff.”

She hands the paper back with a brittle expression on her face. “Well I didn’t know that,” she replies. “But now that I do, what exactly do you need me to help you with?”

He looks down at the numbers and the letters, the meaningless acronyms and the arrows to nowhere. “I don’t know,” he dismisses, “he told me to show this to the traders and see what they think about it. He’s just trying to figure out what he’s getting into before he goes into business with them.”

She splays her fingers flat against her hips, and he waits quietly.

“Okay,” she prompts. “And what do you need from me?”

He shrugs. “Come with me and help me talk to them, I guess.”

Lowering her gaze back to her computer screen, she takes a heavy breath and drops her shoulders, then sighs one more time before she looks back up at him.

“Give me ten minutes.”

“Yeah,” he says, taking a step back. “Okay, so I’ll just be…out here.”

“Mm.”

“Thanks.”

“Mm-hm.”

He opens the door and steps out into the hall, and when he turns back, she’s sat down at her desk with her forehead pressed into her hands, and he doesn’t have the energy to hold it against her.

Leaning against the wall, he begins counting to six hundred, getting all the way to seventy-two before anyone bothers to interrupt.

“Mike?” Louis asks, inching forward as though Mike might flee at any moment.

He doesn’t, though. He just raises his hand.

“Hi Louis.”

Louis peers up at him. “Harvey said you were getting better, but I had no idea you were on your way back.”

Mike shrugs, already weary of this story even though he hasn’t bothered to tell it to anyone yet. “I am,” he says. “Better, not back. This is just for today.”

Louis stares at him for awhile, as though this is either the best or the worst thing that could possibly have happened, but he can’t figure out which. Maybe it’s both.

“How are you?”

Mike sighs.

“Getting there.”

Louis smiles proudly, as though he had anything to do with it. Mike starts counting up from ninety-nine.

“It’s great to see you,” Louis says, and Mike’s lips quirk up at the corner.

“You too.”

One hundred and five, one hundred and six…

Louis nods, dawdling another moment before he walks off down the hall, and Mike folds his hands together behind his head. Through the glass wall, he watches Rachel talk on her office phone, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and squeezing her eyes shut tight, and if this is such a struggle for her, she didn’t have to say yes.

One hundred and eleven, one hundred and twelve…

Rachel hangs up her phone with measured sedateness and presses her face into her hands.

Two hundred, two hundred and one…

She stands eventually, clenching her hands into fists, and walks out of her office into the hall. It hasn’t been close to ten minutes, but she probably knows that; anyway, if she doesn’t, he certainly isn’t going to point it out.

“Let’s go.”

He follows silently, without any pretense of knowing where to go or what to do, and she doesn’t say a word.

\---

After, when everything’s said and done, Rachel folds her arms across her chest and keeps her eyes on the seam of the elevator door as they ride back up to the fiftieth floor, and Mike replays every part of the meeting that he can remember as he decides not to read anything into the fact that she hasn’t said a word since they parted ways with Stu Buzzini, the stock trader who just moved in downstairs and who Jessica wants to make nice with. Associates scurry out of their way as they step into the hall, and Donna looks up as they approach.

“How did it go?”

“It went fine,” Rachel says immediately, and Mike grins.

“Harvey and Stu are either gonna get along great or they’re going to kill each other.”

Donna smiles at him.

“Glad to hear it,” she says as Rachel drops her arms and shifts her weight from side to side. “Harvey’s a little busy right now, but Mike, you can go in if you want.”

He looks sideways into Harvey’s office, where Harvey is seated at his desk with a pen in his hand and a big pile of papers beside him that’s messy in such a way that Mike figures it’s just five or six different files stacked on top of each other.

“Okay.”

“Donna,” Rachel stutters, jerking her thumb back over her shoulder, “I’m, I’m just gonna go.”

Donna knits her eyebrows together and nods slowly. “Yeah,” she says, “sure, go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Mike calls as Rachel walks away with a little wave and an indistinct murmur. She disappears into her office, and Mike checks his watch; it’s almost one, which is the perfect time for him and Harvey to go get something to eat so Mike can tell him all about their meeting with Stu the stock trader, and then Harvey can finish his work and they’ll go home and everything will be just fine. Just like old times.

“Mike?”

“Hm?”

Donna leans forward and looks up at him.

“You can go in.”

Right. He was getting to that.

Harvey looks up and sets his pen down as Mike opens the door.

“Hey, how’d it go?” he asks, the fervency of whatever he was working on a moment ago vanished without a trace as though nothing is more important than what Mike has to tell him, nothing is more important than this.

Sitting in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk, Mike drums his fingers on his thighs.

“He was a political science major in college,” he begins. “But he got a job at JP Morgan right after he graduated and started working in finance.”

Harvey smiles like he thinks it’s a joke. “Okay,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “What else?”

The encounter begins to play over itself in his mind, and Mike frowns as the scenes come together all out of order. “He said the oil market is starting to recover from 2014,” he remembers, “but he doesn’t think it’s sustainable in the long term and the business is better off investing in renewables.”

Harvey twists his lips into a smirk. “I’d like to see him try to convince Burns to give up the oil business.”

Mike’s stomach clenches. “You said to keep it anonymous.”

“I know,” Harvey assures him, leaning in again, “and he doesn’t know Burns either way, so I’ll give him a pass on that one. So.” He smacks his palm down on his desk. “How does he think this mystery client should start start pulling a one-eighty on his business model without completely fucking himself over?”

Mike shrugs. “He didn’t say.”

Harvey’s face twitches, just for a second, right under his eyes.

“Did you ask?”

Did he? He should have, he should have known it would be important, he should have known Harvey would ask. Or Rachel should have, she’s been doing this a lot longer. Of course, she doesn’t know Harvey like Mike does, she doesn’t know how he thinks, or what he’d want. This isn’t her fault.

“No.”

The excitement shaping Harvey’s smile, the brightness in his eyes begins to dim, a reverse Polaroid picture, and this is wrong, this is all wrong, everything is stupid and backwards and Mike is such an _idiot._

No. No, he got some things right, didn’t he, he brought Rachel along in the first place, he got Stu to talk to him, to look at the deal, to berate this not-fictional company for trying to cling to its outdated methods. There must be something he heard, something he saw, something he learned that counts, _something_ that matters.

“His computer screen had a graph on it,” Mike says, because Stu didn’t show that to him, that was private but Mike saw it anyway, and that must mean something, right, that has to count at least a little bit. “It was called ‘MRK, Merck and Co Inc.,’ and the y-axis went from thirty-seven to forty-nine, and the high point was about forty-eight, but right now it’s only at forty-four point oh-five.”

Harvey looks at him for awhile, reading some signs Mike can’t see or coming to some conclusion Mike can't reach, and then he starts nodding, setting his hands in front of him and curling his fingers back over his pen.

“Alright,” he says. “Well, that’s something.”

Yeah, see, there you go. Mike settles back in his chair, and Harvey picks the pen back up and removes the cap. It’s almost one, and when Harvey is done with this, they can go out for lunch, and it’ll be just like old times.

“There were other boxes, around the graph,” Mike adds abruptly as the picture in his head comes further into focus. “One above, one to the left, and one in the corner, they had live feeds in them.”

Harvey scribbles a note in the margin of the page in front of him.

“Good to know.”

Mike smiles again, prouder, but Harvey doesn’t raise his eyes from his paper, and he doesn’t ask anything more, and Mike’s smile begins to fall.

Wait. No, this— This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Tilting to the side, Mike skims the upside-down text of the paper Harvey’s studying, catching the words “Asia Carbon Industries, Inc.,” and Harvey’s not even paying attention, he doesn’t care about what Mike has to tell him because Mike did it all wrong, this simple task, and nothing he has to say is worth a goddamn thing.

Mike laces his fingers together and sets his hands in his lap as his gaze softens and drifts off to the right, to the shelves full of records that line the wall.

Well. It’s nice, in its way. It’s nice that Harvey is trying to make Mike feel worthwhile, nice that he’s making the effort. It’s kind of him, but kindness doesn’t stop the heat from rising on the back of Mike’s neck, it doesn’t stop the shame from eating away at his gut.

It’s nice, though, that he’s pretending Mike is good for anything.

Real nice.


	10. Chapter 10

“On it.”

Mike tosses his hand in an awkward salute, slightly off-kilter, and Harvey presses his fingertips to his desk as he watches him go. The door falls shut in its languid way and then Harvey sits, grabbing randomly at the papers scattered around his desk and dropping a haphazard stack in front of himself because more work is the answer, more work is something to do while he waits. A necessary distraction in more ways than one.

This is the right decision, isn’t it? This is the right move. Harvey nods to himself as he uncaps a heavy ballpoint pen and taps it against the upper right corner of the top sheet, a little black pinprick growing to a cluster of points, a proper smudge blotting the page.

Yes, this is the right move, this is a good idea. Mike will try his best because Mike always tries his best, and it’ll be good enough because Mike’s best is always good enough, and Mike is doing everything he can, and every little bit helps, and it’s all going to be good. And even if it isn’t, even if it all goes to shit, it’ll be alright because Mike tried his best, and that’s all anyone can ask is that he try.

Harvey taps the upper right corner of the top sheet, the nub of the pen dragging in little comet tails over the header, and he reads each line of the— What is this, this earnings report, he reads each line three times over to make sure he understands it perfectly before he moves on to the next, and he doesn’t look up at Donna trying to hide her nervous little glances behind her hand as she tucks her hair behind her ear, but he’s not stupid, he knows she’s watching him.

It’s not getting any easier, of course. These things never do.

They’ll do what they can.

\---

Harvey keeps his head down as Mike leans forward with brightness in his eyes, with eagerness to please that sends Harvey back in time, back to the beginning of all of this when they were arrogant and stupid and naïve and nothing could touch them. Mike describes Stu’s graphs in excruciating detail and Harvey does his very best not to break down because this is so much better than they were five months ago; they’ve done so much, they’ve come so far, and that’s something, isn’t it, that’s more than nothing.

Mike sits back in his chair as the brightness dims, the giddy rush wearing away, and Harvey keeps his head down.

In the silence, in the stillness, Mike sits and waits for him to finish his work, for him to do whatever it is he’s doing. To read this quarterly report, to make these notes in the margins. To act like he can focus, to pretend he’s doing anything worthwhile.

Harvey stabs his pen down against the paper, a definitive period at the end of an annotation that doesn’t need one, sighing an accomplished sort of sigh and looking up with a little smile as though he knows exactly what he’s doing. As though this is all going according to plan.

“Alright,” he says, pushing his chair back a little ways. “What do you say we go out for dinner? Celebrate your first day back?”

Suddenly coming to life, flipping a secret switch buried underneath the loam and the clod, stuck between the high hopes and the disappointing results, Mike smiles like he means it and presses his hands against his knees to push himself up to stand.

“Yeah,” he says. “Where should we go?”

Shrugging his jacket on over his shoulders, Harvey looks down at the floor and figures he should have thought this through a little better. “How about Luke’s?” he proposes whimsically, raising his head.

Mike’s face goes blank for a few second, but then he buttons his suit jacket and follows Harvey as though this is all completely normal, as though nothing’s wrong at all. “Is that a fish place?”

Harvey’s smile widens proudly, a funny sort of thing to be so happy about but it doesn’t matter because it’s something, which is more than he has any right to expect. “Yeah,” he says, ushering Mike out the door. “Lobster rolls, what do you think? That sound okay? Keep it casual for once?”

Pasting on a thin imitation of Harvey’s grin, Mike nods and follows him past Donna’s desk, down the hall to the elevators. “Yeah,” he says. “Sounds good.”

“Okay,” Harvey says, clapping his hand down on Mike’s back and urging him into the carriage. “Great.”

The indicator ticks down the floors in silence, and Harvey breathes slowly.

“I called Shay,” he says as they pass the thirty-sixth floor. “While you were in your meeting with Stu. You’ve got an appointment next Wednesday at three thirty, Ray can drive you.”

Mike hums softly, keeping his eyes on the floor.

“You said you wanted to see her, right?” Harvey asks, more or less rhetorically.

“Mm,” Mike murmurs, and Harvey decides to call it an agreement.

“Okay.”

The elevator speeds down to the lobby, skipping from fifteen straight down to one, and Harvey clears his throat as they walk out through the turnstiles.

“So how was your day?”

Mike touches his hands together behind his back and pulls his shoulders down for a second, and Harvey watches as his reflex, “Fine,” the usual, the standard, collapses under the force of a moment of brazen honesty.

“Weird,” he says, keeping his eyes on the floor tiles passing by underneath their feet. “When everyone was visiting me at the hospital, it was like they knew they weren’t supposed to ask me to do anything because I was…in the hospital, like they had to wait until I got out, but then I showed up at work and they wanted to ask me to do work and stuff, but they still don’t think they’re allowed. So they started to, but then they just…didn’t.”

Well, sure. None of us know what we’re doing, don’t you know that?

Harvey nods as though he understands perfectly. “You did good,” he says. “You did good for your first day back. You let me know when you want to try this again, we can take another shot at it.”

Mike holds his arms close to his sides as he slips out the door Harvey holds open for him.

“It was weird.”

Harvey nods as they walk down the steps to the car. Ray holds the back door open, and Mike climbs in first, and Harvey sets his hand on top of the door frame.

Not bad, for a start.

\---

Without thinking about it too much, Harvey climbs out of bed on Tuesday morning and walks right into the closet to pull out his very best black wool suit, laying it out on top of the covers so it’ll be ready for him to put on when he’s finished brushing his teeth and splashing cold water on his face. Not because he has anything to prove, or anyone to impress, particularly; today just feels like one of those sorts of days, and he’s learned by now that it’s better to indulge such simple impulses than to ignore them and end up quietly fretting all day long over nothing.

At the kitchen counter, Mike sits in his baggy shirt and loose sweatpants, eating a bowl of dry cereal and gazing indifferently into the empty sink. Harvey pours himself a mug of coffee that takes care to avoid spilling on his purple pinstripe shirt.

“Do you feel like coming into the office again today?” he asks, raising the mug to his lips and leaving it there without taking a drink. Mike shrugs as though he’s giving the question some real thought, even though it’s obvious he already knows the answer.

“I’ve got boxing at ten,” he says. “It doesn’t really make sense for me to go in.”

He probably doesn’t want to, anyway.

“Alright,” Harvey says. He sips the coffee, and Mike crunches down on a bite of Honey Bunches of Oats.

Out the windows, the dark sky promises a heavy rain sometime later this morning, maybe early afternoon.

“Thanks, though.”

Harvey smiles a little.

\---

“Any messages?” Harvey asks, breezing past Donna’s desk with no real expectation of response. She looks up at him with an unsettled sort of expression, her eyebrows knitted nervously together, and he thinks to pause for only a moment before reflex and instinct propel him the rest of the way into his office, the door falling shut behind him.

To her credit, Donna waits nearly five minutes before she edges inside with a timid smile on her face. Whatever this is, whatever she has to say, it’s going to be important; Harvey saves a draft of the half-finished deposition pulled up on his laptop and closes the shell, looking over at her blandly as her smile twitches.

“How did it go yesterday?” she asks.

Of course.

He smiles without mirth. “It went well.”

Donna presses her hand to the wall, and her smiles falls away. Harvey rolls his shoulders back and sets his arms down on his desk.

“Mike did great,” he corrects himself. “I should’ve helped him out more, I should’ve prepared more, but he did what he could.”

Lowering her face until her hair falls in front of her eyes, Donna sighs haltingly; Harvey would think her amused if not for the tension in her back.

“What?”

She sighs again, longer this time, and brushes her hair back.

“Is that what you told him?”

“That he did great?” He frowns. “Of course I did. He _was_ great, why wouldn’t I tell him?”

“Harvey, I heard you yesterday,” she says, lifting her face up, standing tall and taking a step towards him. “He didn’t ask any of the questions you would’ve, he didn’t get the information you wanted and you told him it was helpful that he saw the trade feeds on Stu Buzzini’s computer screen.”

“He told me which stocks Stu was looking at.”

“Every trader in New York has access to those feeds!”

Staring at him imploringly, Donna blinks as her eyes begin to glisten, and Harvey tries to hold onto his glare even as he feels the ground slipping out from under his feet, any leverage he tried to convince himself he has vanishing into smoke. She’s right, he knows she is; he knew it then, back when lying to himself that it didn’t matter didn’t make it any less true, and he knows it now, when she won’t let him pretend anymore.

“He’s doing his best,” he grits out. “A little positive encouragement never hurt anybody.”

“Harvey, you are _lying_ to him.” Donna blinks again, a little color rising in her cheeks, and Harvey turns away.

“Can you blame me?”

“Yes!”

She slams her hands down on his desk and he stands furiously, meeting her gaze with ice in his eyes and his veins.

“I’m doing the best I can!”

“You’re lying to _yourself!_ ”

“Don’t you think I _know_ that?”

Oh, no. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

She holds his gaze as they struggle to compose themselves, to keep whatever passes for poise in the middle of a fucking mess like this, and he counts one second at a time until she steps back, shaking her head.

“This was never going to go the way you wanted it to,” she says softly. “This was always going to be hard.”

He scoffs and pounds his fist down against his laptop.

“You just know everything, don’t you.”

She lowers her gaze, and he considers it a small mercy.

“I know you,” she says. “I know you’ll sacrifice yourself for the people you love.”

He glares down at his hands, and she looks at him again.

“And I know you’ll fight so hard to help them that you might not even realize that you’re hurting them instead.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, he holds the skin between his teeth until he tastes a familiar metallic tang. Well, there’s no point in lying to himself if no one else is going to believe it, either; maybe sometime later on, he’ll feel the weight lift. One of these days, everything will start getting better. Not in a week, not in a month. Never for good.

But something.

Donna steps forward shyly.

“Harvey?”

He presses his lips together.

“How long have you been waiting to say that to me?”

She looks away for a moment. “Awhile.”

Yeah; that tracks.

Relaxing his shoulders, Harvey taps his knuckles against his laptop again. “How did Rachel handle it?”

Donna grins and tosses her hair, just as willing as he is to set all of this behind them and refuse to talk about it again for the rest of their lives. “Why would you think I’d know a thing like that?”

He narrows his eyes over a tight smile. “I know you,” he taunts. “I know you’ll do anything you can to help the people you care about, even when they don’t think they need it.”

She smiles coyly, and he clears his throat as he lowers himself into his desk chair. “And I heard you two on the phone before they went down to talk to Stu.”

“Cheater.”

“Resourceful.”

Shaking her head, she sits opposite him in one of the client chairs, setting her hands on the armrests and leaning back. “It was hard,” she says. “She was scared when she called me, she was afraid that he’d be too different and she wouldn’t recognize him at all, and she wanted me to tell her everything would be okay.”

They could all stand to hear something like that.

“What did you say?”

She tilts her head. “I told her to take it one step at a time, and that the only thing she can do is her best. Then last night when she came over to my apartment, she told me she was terrified because now that Mike’s out of the hospital, it’s a lot harder for her to make herself understand that he’s not himself because when he’s here, at work, he’s back where he belongs, he’s supposed to know what to do.”

She watches him patiently, and Harvey nips the skin on the inside of his cheek, nodding slowly.

“That’s what Mike said.”

She smiles, softening her gaze, the tone of her voice. “It’s different seeing it in person, isn’t it?”

He smiles back and doesn’t remind her that she doesn’t know the half of it. She knows enough, same as any of them; she knows enough to get by.

They’ve always been good at living this way.

\---

The apartment is quiet when Harvey returns home. The glow of the city shines in through the windows, carving shapes out of the darkness, edges and hints of things, and Harvey doesn’t turn the lights on until he’s put his coat away in the closet and taken off his shoes.

Mike’s bedroom door is closed. Maybe he’s napping; maybe he ordered some takeout for dinner and now he’s tucked himself away for the night, maybe he doesn’t feel like talking right now. Maybe he’s reading and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.

This isn’t the first time Harvey’s come home to silence and the illusion of solitude, but it’s the first time in awhile. It’s the first time since Mike started kickboxing, for one thing; it’s the first time since Mike started going out on his own for walks, down to the corner store for an apple or the deli for a sandwich and a cup of soup. It’s the first time since everything started feeling—

It’s the first time in awhile.

Going to the kitchen, turning on the light under the hood, Harvey sets about making just enough noise to let Mike know he’s home, if he didn’t catch the front door opening, but probably not enough to rouse him, if he really is asleep. The saucepan clatters a little too loudly when he lets his attention drift too long to the bedroom door, but Mike doesn’t make any noise, and Harvey paralyzing himself over the stove with the pan clutched tight in his hand doesn’t seem to be doing anyone any good.

The leftover bisque makes an unpleasant sort of slopping sound as he dumps it into the pan, and Harvey eyes the door nervously even though it wasn’t nearly enough to rouse Mike from sleep.

Minutes later, he tries to concentrate on ladling the steaming soup out into a deep bowl, carrying it over to the dining table where he sits with his knife and spoon, laying a cloth napkin out across his lap; after three spoonfuls, he brings the bowl back to the counter, wrapping it in tinfoil and putting it back in the refrigerator, tossing the napkin into the laundry and putting the knife back in the silverware drawer. Nothing else is going to happen tonight; he might as well go to bed.

Lying under the covers, staring up at the darkness, Harvey places his hands over his stomach and tries to fall asleep. After a minute or so, maybe two or three, he realizes he’d have much better luck if he bothered to close his eyes.

So who’s coming to save the day this time?

\---

Harvey was only trying to help.

Lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to imagine where the corners are, or the light fixtures, Mike repeats the mantra to himself because he knows it’s true, he _knows_ it is, and it’s no one’s fault that they got it all so horribly wrong. He was trying, and it’s not his fault that Mike is so bad at this.

Mike cradles the little stuffed dog to his chest and rolls over onto his side. Here in the dark, here in the dead of night, everything is alright. Everything is just fine, even if it’s just for a little while. Even if it’s just pretend.

Mike closes his eyes tight and tucks his head down under the covers.

That’s bullshit.

He fucked it up. He fucked everything up. But Harvey expected that, didn’t he? That’s why he asked Mike to do it, that’s why he invented such a stupid little task for him. Something that didn’t matter either way. Nice to have if you can get it, but at the end of the day, who gives a shit?

Mike curls himself up into a little ball and stretches out so fast he hears his spine crack.

This is all bullshit, isn’t it.

Sitting up, rubbing his eyes, Mike drops the little stuffed dog on his pillow and sets his feet on the floor as quietly as he can. Pushing the blankets aside, he stands, creeping to the door and opening it with a soft click, taking deliberate steps across the floor as he sneaks down the hall to Harvey’s room. It’s late, but it’s not that late. It’s been a long day, but not that long.

Anyway, it’s the nights that are the hardest.

He opens the door, and Harvey raises his head at the sound.

“Mike?”

Mike steps forward and stands at the foot of the bed, and Harvey pushes himself up to sitting.

“Mike, is everything okay? Are you okay?”

Mike fidgets with his hands and wishes he had something to hold onto.

“I’m sorry I fucked up the thing with the traders.”

Harvey looks at him, wide-eyed in the darkness, and Mike figures he probably couldn’t sleep, either.

“You didn’t,” Harvey says firmly. “I got what I needed, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”

His face twisting into a wry smile, Mike looks down at the floor and balls his fist up in the hem of his shirt.

“Yeah,” he says. “Well at least it wasn’t important.”

Harvey frowns. “What are you talking about, of course it was.”

“Okay.”

“Hey.” Harvey sits up a little straighter, a little more alert, a little more prepared. “Don’t do that.”

Mike looks at him indifferently. “What?”

“Don’t—brush me off like that, don’t come to me with a problem and then stop talking when you don’t get the answer you want.”

Mike shrugs. That’s not what this is, is it? Yeah, yeah, it is, but wouldn’t everything be so much better off this way? Wouldn’t it all be so much easier if they just learned to live with it, this indefinite limbo of almost-good-enough where everyone has to clean up after all his stupid failures until he gets better later, at some point eventually?

“I know it didn’t matter.”

Harvey slips down in his seat a little.

“It did.”

Mike quirks his mouth skeptically, and Harvey sighs.

“It needed to get done eventually, but you’re right, it wasn’t at the top of the docket.”

“And it didn’t matter if I did everything wrong.”

“You didn’t do _everything_ wrong,” Harvey corrects immediately. “He talked to you. He told you about himself, he told you his history, you got a rapport going. That’s important.”

Mike shifts his weight to his left leg. “Anyone else could’ve done it.”

“Maybe,” Harvey admits, “but anyone didn’t do it. You did.”

“I know.”

Leaning forward, looking up at his petulant expression, Harvey frowns. He reaches to turn on the light at his bedside table, and Mike winces.

“Mike,” he says carefully. “I was just trying to help. You kind of sprung that on me when you asked to come in, but if you want to try again, we can talk about it. We can plan ahead. Maybe you and I could go over some of the cases I’m working right now, you can give me your take. You can…build your instincts back up again.”

Sure, if Mike doesn’t say something stupid and ruin it.

No. Stop it. Harvey is trying to help, Harvey is doing his best, and what could happen between the two of them, just talking? Mike can’t destroy months of research, years of work by just _talking._ Relearning the ropes, working from the ground up, he’s gotta do it sometime; Harvey’s already seen him at the lowest of the low, what’s a bunch of dumb questions after he’s already watched Mike learn how to walk again?

“That’d be good,” Mike says. “Thank you.”

Harvey nods, smiling a little.

“We’ll figure this out.”

Mike looks down at the bedspread where Harvey’s laid his hands. Yeah; of course they will. One of these days.

“Thanks for sticking around.”

Harvey makes a disbelieving sound, as though the alternative is unthinkable.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Pressing his lips together, Harvey clenches the sheets tight in his hand, and Mike sits on the edge of the bed.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it,” Harvey says. “I… I love you, Mike, I’ll be here for you as long as you need me.”

Mike’s stomach clenches tight, a prickling sensation spreading up his spine and across the back of his head. He bites his tongue and lowers his gaze to his knees.

“Don’t do that.”

Harvey tilts away from him. “What?”

“Don’t tell me you love me.”

Mike allows himself a moment of peace before he looks up at Harvey’s horrified face, his revulsion at Mike’s rejection of such a simple thing, such a fundamental human emotion, such a deeply personal revelation. He keeps himself hidden, curled in, looking down until he can’t, until he can’t do that to Harvey anymore, Harvey who’s trying as hard as he can to be everything Mike needs, to help him when even he doesn’t know what it is that’ll make it better.

Then their eyes meet, and he doesn’t know what he sees there, but it isn’t disgust, and it isn’t pity. It isn’t disdain, and it isn’t fear. It’s not quite acceptance, not quite understanding, but hanging somewhere in between.

Harvey pushes the covers down and sits beside him at the end of the bed.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

Mike scoffs and drops his arms down in his lap.

“It’s not fair.”

A moment passes in silence, and Harvey puts his hand on his back.

“I know.”

“I’m supposed to be able to say it back,” Mike says coldly. “I’m supposed to know how it feels.”

Harvey rubs his hand up and down and closes it over Mike’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mike glares at him. “How am I supposed to believe you when I don’t?”

Harvey lowers his hand. “You don’t believe me?”

Mike folds his arms across his thighs. “I don’t know what it’s like.”

Remember that? Remember how broken I am? Remember how worthless? Sure, Harvey can teach him how to think like a lawyer, how to read a case file, but what do you do for a guy who doesn’t remember how to be a person?

Then Harvey puts his hand back on Mike’s shoulder and pulls him in, against his chest, and maybe he understands how it is. Maybe just a little.

“I said you don’t have to say it back,” he says. “You feel however you feel, I’ll be here while you figure it out. And even if you don’t believe me, I promise you it’s the truth.”

However he feels.

Mike leans against Harvey’s chest as his eyes go out of focus in the dim light of the side table lamp.

It’s not fair, but they’ll keep trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Luke’s Lobster](https://www.lukeslobster.com/) is a well-regarded and quite casual seafood restaurant with multiple locations both within New York City and in other states.


	11. Chapter 11

“Hey, hey.”

Lurching forward, Mike halts his blow abruptly when the strike pad doesn’t rise up to meet him, clenching his teeth tight and catching Tracy at the edge of his vision as she steps back with a shrewd look on her face.

“You want to wrap up at the speed bag?”

Mike sniffs and rolls his shoulders back, flexing his fingers to scratch at the lining of his gloves. “I’m fine,” he says. “One more.”

Tracy shakes her head without a second thought, pulling the pads off of her hands. “That’s enough for now,” she says. “You can take five minutes on the bag if you want, but we’re done with the drills for today.”

“I got it,” Mike insists, widening his stance and lowering his center of gravity. “I’m _fine._ ”

“Get some water,” she says firmly. “You want to wrap up on the bag or not?”

Glaring spitefully over his shoulder, he shakes his head and picks at the velcro around his wrists.

“No.”

No consolation prizes here.

“Hey.” She reaches out to unstrap his gloves for him, pulling the left one off as he fumbles with the right. “How are you doing, is something wrong? Is your head okay?”

Well, that depends.

Mike coughs into his fist and wipes the sweat from his brow.

“I’m good.”

Tracy crouches to fit the pads into her workout bag. “We all have off days,” she says. He grumbles under his breath, and she stands with the bag hung over her shoulder. “Anything you want to talk about?”

He shoves his hand back through his hair and flinches when salt drips into his eye.

“It’s nothing.”

Grabbing a towel hanging from the ropes netting the boxing ring, she holds it out to him when he tries to rub the sweat away with the back of his hand.

“Alright. You’re sure you’re okay?”

He shoves the towel over his face, wiping it across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, and closes his eyes so tight that his head starts to hurt.

“Mike?”

“Huh?”

Tracy pats him on the shoulder and smiles in a friendly sort of way.

“Feel better.”

Mike smiles back, a bloodless instinct.

“Thanks.”

He will. Later, eventually, he will.

It’s not important right now.

In the locker room, Mike pulls on his blue jeans and sits with the towel draped around his shoulders, his vision sliding out of focus as his mind quiets to nothingness, an accidental meditative calm with none of the insight, none of the clarity of thought such things profess to offer.

After awhile, he reaches down to shove his feet into his sneakers, realizing a couple of seconds too late that he’s accidentally swapped the left and the right. Well, that’s what he gets for not paying attention.

A little while later, the guy who trains with Tracy after Mike walks through the door with a big smile on his face. “Hey Mike,” he says.

Mike smiles back, pulling the towel from around his neck and balling it up in his fist as he shoves his arms into the sleeves of his coat. “Hey.”

Jason is the guy’s name, he thinks. Or is it Joseph? No, Jason. Mike is pretty sure he’s been smiling every time he’s ever seen him.

“Have a good day,” Jason says as Mike walks past him.

It doesn’t occur to Mike to say “You too” until he’s already out of earshot, but he does it anyway.

\---

One fourteen is an incontrovertibly pointless time of day.

It’s no closer to the end of business than it is to the beginning; even further if the day runs long, as it’s all but guaranteed to do, and Harvey won’t be home anytime soon. Having finished boxing two hours ago, any endorphin high has faded well enough away, but Mike’s body’s still aches far too much for another workout. And besides that, every single television channel is right in the middle of a commercial break, from the repetitive drone of MSNBC’s talking heads to the monotonous drumbeat of USA’s latest procedural.

Pointless.

Mike drops the TV remote to the floor and slides down the sofa cushions until he’s lying flat on his back.

All of it.

What did he think was going to happen? What did he _really_ think was going to happen? He’s wanted to be a lawyer all his life— Well, as far back as he can remember, but that amounts to the same thing nowadays, doesn’t it. He’s wanted to be a lawyer for goddamn ever, and he _was,_ and he was _good,_ so—what? It’s been his lifelong dream, so it’s supposed to be easy? He should be a natural, because he wants it real bad? Says who? Where does he get off expecting life to start being _kind_ all of a sudden?

Groping blindly at his side, Mike grabs a pillow and slams it down over his face. He doesn’t scream, and he doesn’t particularly try to suffocate himself, but he doesn’t pick it back up until he’s panting for breath, red sparks coloring his vision, and whatever it was he was trying to accomplish, that wasn’t it.

Alright, so it was hard, going back to the firm. It didn’t go _that_ badly. Alright, so it did, or maybe even worse. But that doesn’t mean he’ll never be as good as he used to be. Maybe even better. That’s what they all keep telling him, at least.

No. That’s what they all keep telling _themselves._

It might be true, though. Maybe not, but then again, you never know.

Mike drops the pillow and sighs into his hands. Great, so that’s settled. And now what the fuck’s he supposed to do for the rest of the afternoon, just sit around and wait for someone to give him instructions? Sure, that’ll help, that’ll do him some good.

One seventeen is an arguably pointless time of day.

Heaving himself up off the couch, he shuffles to the windows, to the sliding door the opens out on the balcony. The winter wind cuts through his t-shirt, and he narrows his eyes at the whitecaps on the East River.

He’ll go for a walk. That’s what he’ll do.

Where? He’s just going to wander around aimlessly? What’s the point of that?

Anywhere. It’s better than nothing. It’s better than this.

Closing the glass door carefully behind him, Mike goes to grab his coat out of the closet, shoving his feet into his sneakers as he walks out into the hall. The elevator is only three floors away when it occurs to him that if he’s going out, he probably ought to bring his cell phone, just in case. Couldn’t hurt. Never know when he might get into some kind of accident or something.

Mike scowls at himself. That was stupid.

Kind of funny, though, in a weird sort of way he can’t explain with words.

But he’s the only one who’s allowed to say it.

It’s a little warmer outside than it felt on the balcony, but only a little. Mike shoves his hands into his pockets and looks up at the hazy grey sky; maybe it’ll snow later. Maybe it’ll snow on him. That would be okay, probably; it won’t snow very hard. Might be nice.

The breeze picks up as he nears the river and Mike stands to face it, to meet it, edging toward the railing as he dares himself to get close enough to touch it, dares himself to look into the water below as he breathes in the smell of low tide. He could do it; the railing is high, he won’t fall in. He could do it. He’s getting better all the time. He can do it, he _will_ do it. Just another step, then another, then one more.

The pavement begins to fall out from under him, a high wire act nipping at his heels for the chance to push him to the ground. Mike takes his hands out of his pockets for balance as he walks the path closest to the thin and barren trees and looks up at the bleak and cloudy sky.

It was summer, in the hospital.

It was summer when he watched out a window reinforced with delicate wire mesh as a little bird struggled against the wind, and the sky threatened torrential rain, and Harvey promised not to hurt himself for Mike’s sake.

He promised to try.

“I love you,” Harvey said in the dead of winter, the dead of night. And it’s okay if Mike doesn’t believe it, it’s okay if he doesn’t understand, because Harvey knows this is hard, he knows the healing is slow, and he’s not going anywhere. He’s not going away.

Mike sighs a long breath that turns to crystal as it meets the air. It’s true, isn’t it? It has to be, after all this. After everything. All the sleepless nights and the steps forward and back and the silent fear that this time is the one they’re not going to recover from, this time is the one where their luck runs out.

I love you.

He’s supposed to say it back. He’s supposed to be _able_ to say it back, isn’t that how these things work? Doesn’t Harvey deserve that much? Doesn’t he deserve to love someone who feels the same, doesn’t he deserve to be with someone who isn’t trapping him in place with taunting reminders of how far they’ve come and goading pressures of how far they still have left to go? Doesn’t he know that Mike will be fine on his own, that it’s not worth putting himself through all this suffering and heartache for a wing and a prayer?

Mike stops by a bench and looks down at the damp wooden seat.

He’ll be fine on his own. He will.

Mike closes his eyes against the breeze.

Stop it.

He doesn’t really want to be alone.

It would be okay, if he had to. He’d get by. It might even be easier, for awhile, living with all his doubt and uncertainty and confusion without needing to explain it, without needing to face it down all the time. It might be for the best for all of them.

Mike sits on the cold wood and holds himself tight.

He doesn’t really want to go away.

Gusting off the river, the wind cuts through to his bones, and Mike stands and walks back the way he came.

\---

Harvey’s mind fills with television static and the clicking hum of a laundromat dryer as he lowers himself to his knees on the dusty floor of the file room, and there are a million things still to do today, a million phone calls to make and emails to send and briefs to write and depositions to attend, and all he wants to do is disappear.

He takes a deep breath and blows it out slow, and sinks into the television static and the clicking hum of the laundromat dryer.

It’s alright.

Everything is alright; absolutely, it’s all fine. He just needs a minute.

Harvey closes his eyes and presses his hands to the floor as the world begins to blur at the edges. It’s been a long day, just like yesterday was, just like tomorrow will be, and every day next week and the week after that and the one after that, and everyone’s doing their best to help him, to prop him up while things are hard, and all they need is for him to try to hold himself together from the minute he wakes up in the morning to the minute he falls into bed at night. It’s not much to ask; all they need him to do is stand up straight and keep going, keep moving on, that’s all it is, that’s all they want, and he’s doing the best that he can, and it’s still not enough to get him off of this fucking tilt-a-whirl.

He will, though.

This won’t last forever. They’ll get through it.

He just needs a minute.

\---

The day runs long, as it always does, and Harvey doesn’t return home until late, but he brings dinner, as he sometimes does, and it’s not a peace offering, Mike doesn’t think, but it’s a nice gesture, even if Harvey tries not to call attention to it. They sit at the dining room table, such as it is, and watch out the wall of windows as snow falls gently against the purple-streaked sky, the permanent dusk of the city that never sleeps, and talk about inconsequential things because they deserve it.

They can do what they want.

“All I’m saying is that everyone stays home from work sometimes and they might not all want to watch something that’s specifically tailored for the suburban housewife set.”

“Do you need me to teach you how to use the DVR?”

“I’m not going to record a _Sopranos_ marathon just to have it play in the background while I’m surfing Wikipedia.”

“Where the hell did you find a marathon of _The Sopranos_?”

“It’s just an example.”

“You’d have better luck finding ten straight hours of _M*A*S*H_.”

“I knew I wasn’t going to get any sympathy from you.”

“Or _Law & Order_.”

Mike laughs, and Harvey laughs, and they finish their pizza as Mike wonders why Harvey apologized for not getting cheese in the crust, which doesn’t seem like something he’d ever do in the first place anyway. It doesn’t matter; for a few hours, nothing really matters, and everything is pretty much perfect.

So the night wears on, and Harvey goes to bed, and Mike pulls the covers down and lies on his back with the little stuffed dog cradled to his chest, which is something that’s become a peculiar habit of his, and he tries to fall asleep to the sounds of the city, even though he can’t hear them very well from up here.

It isn’t so bad, the way things are.

Mike turns over on his side and sets the little dog down on his pillow, looking into its glassy blue eyes and stroking his finger through its soft fur.

What if he’d been alone out there on the road? What if he’d died before anyone even knew he was in danger? What if the doctors had saved his life, but they hadn’t had anyone to call? What if they’d sent him home to figure all this out all by himself? What if everyone knew and no one cared?

Mike rubs the little dog’s downy black ears.

It is what it is, but for what it is, it’s pretty good.

He’s got people looking out for him. People who want to help, people who are doing the best that they can. People who are trying to be patient.

He’s got Harvey.

Mike rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling and listens to the hushed sounds of the city reminding him of everywhere he’s come from, everywhere he’s been.

Now, this.

\---

There aren’t enough hours in the night.

It’s warm in his bedroom, tucked under the blankets piled up to combat the hint of winter’s approach and manufacture a reasonable sense of security. Every point is perfectly aligned for Harvey to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep, and the sooner he closes his eyes, the sooner tomorrow will come.

Not yet. Please, just give me a little while longer. One more minute to breathe.

The door clicks open like a fucking godsend and Harvey hates himself for begging to be alone.

“Mike?” he says, as though this is some sort of surprise, as though such a thing is even possible anymore. Rousing himself as best he can, all things considered, he finds it in himself to be grateful for the cover of darkness, the cloak of night making it easier to speak the truth and easier to pretend it’s what either of them wants to hear.

Shuffling forward, Mike sits on the edge of the bed as his eyes drift to the blankets bunched around Harvey’s chest.

“I just wanted to thank you.”

Harvey heaves himself up against the headboard and hates himself for wanting to be alone.

“For what?” he asks, even though he knows, even though the real question is, “Why now?”

It’s not quite dark enough for that.

Mike presses his hands down against his knees and purses his lips ambivalently.

“I dunno,” he says, except that he does. He has to. “Everything.”

Oh, yes. Oh, that.

Harvey shifts his weight, folding his legs under the covers.

“Mike, what’s wrong?”

Mike shrugs. “Nothing.”

“Mike.”

Mike props his arms up behind him and leans back. “I was just thinking about how I really lucked out that you were there when I got hit.”

How you really lucked out that I took you there in the first place.

No. Not again.

“You were lucky Wentworth’s buddy had a helicopter,” Harvey says. “I just met you at the hospital.”

“Yeah, and then you stayed.”

And then he stayed.

Of course he did. Mike needed him, and so he stayed. Mike needs him, and so he’s staying.

This isn’t a question.

Harvey goes a little limp as weariness begins to crawl up through his veins, to drag him down into the television static and the clicking hum of a laundromat dryer, the blurred edges and the drifting sea of indifferent noise.

“Harvey?”

He squints as the room dissolves into shapes and colors, shadows of things fractured up the middle and split along the seams. The bed sinks as Mike turns, crawling up toward the headboard, and Harvey presses his hand to his eyes.

“Harvey, are you okay?”

He doesn’t even try to speak. He knows it won’t work.

“I— Harvey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

Hunching his shoulders, he shakes his head, but it might be too hard to tell. Mike kneels beside him and wonders what he did wrong, and Harvey wants to tell him it was nothing, nothing, but the words swell out of shape in his mouth and he can’t bring himself to say a single goddamn thing.

“Harvey, I’m not leaving you either.”

Harvey takes a shattering breath, coarse and scraping along the back of his throat, and Mike moves a little closer.

In his warm bed, cradled in thick blankets and soft sheets, the choking scent of burning dust and chipped ice filling his mouth every time he inhales, every time he can’t help gasping for air, Harvey sits.

In the darkness, the promise and the threat of tomorrow, of getting up and doing all of this all over again and again and again, in the darkness and the quiet, Harvey cries.

After a little while, a few seconds and then a few more, Mike lays his hand on Harvey’s back, and Harvey presses his face into his palms.

It’ll just be a minute.


End file.
